Further to my last post, one aspect of bluejacking does interest me. A number of the innovations heralded in the next few years involve the practice of hooking together people who may not know each other, but are physically nearby. For instance, look at multiplayer Bluetooth gaming and the N-gage: the idea that people will sit on the trains looking to play games against new opponents is commonplace.

Technically, this is possible now. But what social conventions will we build around this? What mechanisms will we use to advertise the fact that we are interested in playing games with (or sharing media with, or learning more about) people around us who we don't know? And how will we politely request these contatcs?

Today, unsolicited interruptions from strangers via phones exist in the form of SMS spam - and are understandably unpopular. If my phone rings and gets my attention, distracting me from my train of thought or the newspaper I'm reading, will I be any less annoyed if the source of this interruption is nearby?

Bluejacking is interesting because it'll give us the first clues as to how people feel about these kinds of interruptions and how they'll react to them. Of course it won't give us the full picture - but we'll learn a little, which can't be a bad thing.

Update: "The useful mechanisms we've developed to help us play online with strangers, especially in MMPOGs, don't translate so well when our real-life bodies and legal identities are on the line. I wish I knew how to politely request gameplay without freaking someone out, or accept such a request without feeling a little creeped out myself. The problem is not, as Matt Jones suggests, just a question of manners -- although an etiquette of public computer-mediated contact with strangers is a good start. It's a question of physical vulnerability, and how close we will allow virtual strangers to get before we start slugging." - from Confectious

Comments

[chucky_egg]

I Bluejacked a guy on the train the other day (not knowing who it was, but there were only about 6 people in the carriage). It turns out that he's in his forties, and not entirely comfortable explaining to his wife exactly how he got a message saying "Hi, how are you?".

I sent another just to say it was a game, no harm meant, but on the whole he was not a happy bunny.

My GF also says she'd be very worried if she started getting "anonymous" messages from someone nearby, who might be watching her.

I'm not sure the interruption is the biggest issue to the "target", and perhaps (for the uninitiated) the issue is fear of the unknown - in literal and technological terms.

[Tom Hume]

That's a really good point - the anonymity is what matters: but how do we work out ways of dealing with this? Perhaps a "polite" anonymous contact includes a photo of the person making that contact.

We've just been chatting in the office about this stuff, and one of our developers has a friend who was contacted in this way on the tube. Her overwhelming impression was annoyance: that it just "seemed rude".

Interesting that you sent a second message to apologise. Did you not feel that it was acceptable, having communicated already, to introduce yourself in real life?

Thanks for the comment - why anonymous though?

[Eric]

another experiment: get thee to some McFoods place, and then bluejack someone with messages like "Yummm. Try the [whatever]"

[Tom Hume]

Or even with some anti-McFoods info. "Soylent green is people" etc etc.

On the topic of which: how easy is it to determine the source of a contact? Would it be possible to surrepticiously, and effectively untraceably, message a large number of people in this way?

[Mike Butcher]

Tom's idea just re-inforces my view that the gradual prliferation of Bluejacking (and even the more sinister incidences of stalking which are bound to start occuring) will create a need among consumers for software to protect their privacy and manage the Bluetooth interactions they will be happy opting into. Indeed, they will start demanding it from handset makers as Bad-Bluejackers start 'pissing in the pool'.

[Tom Hume]

Mike: completely agree. If bluejacking does become a recurrent annoyance (i.e. doesn't die out once the novelty value wears off), we will need better ways of automatically ignoring contacts from other people.

That said, I think that SMS spam is more likely to provoke the industry into us dealing with the problem of unwanted anonymous contact, if only because there's a financial imperative for the operators to keep people happy using SMS.

[InclininWirefree]

Bluejacking, per se - Not Done.

Bluejacking for a mutually agreed upon purpore - Wht not!?

Their love for golf or the latest flick on the big screen - Would I mind meeting someone out of the blue also interested in watching Kill Bill? Sure.

[Tom Hume]

Is it "out of the blue" though? To arrange an event like playing golf or watching film, don't you want to choose from a pool consisting of either people you know, or people within a wider area than 10m or so from you?
Bluetooth certainly can see has some interesting applications for connecting people locally: gaming, perhaps dating, etc. But is bluejacking one of them?

[Dave Ph]

Isn't this more of a 'presence'/friendster/rendezvous application. If BT is the substrate providing a geographically local network cloud, then it's going to look like the Smart name tags from www.ntag.com.

And then there's 'bluedogging'
You read it here first.

[Tom Hume]

I don't think I understand: If you want a game of golf with someone that near to you, why not just ask them - what's the advantage of using bluetooth?

Or are we saying that there will be "introduction"-style services over bluetooth which mediate this first contact?

[Dave Ph]

I'm suggesting that friendster style 'I like golf and whiskey' BlueTooth 'tags' might facilitate the social interaction with strangers. There are few social circles where announcing 'I like football' is going to get you odd looks, but knowing that all around you are philatelists and numismatists you might not choose to start a conversation about tonight's Arsenal game.

Think of it as a social lubriant, easing that awkward 'Hi - so what do *you* do?' phase of introductions, where you randomly discuss the weather, recent news (but not politics) or how you know the host of the party...

[Tom Hume]

My heart says yes, but my head says that we're not ready for mediating our interaction with local people via phones just yet. Which is not to say it won't happen, of course. Did you see the link in the main article to the SymbianOS Bluetooth dating app?

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