Imagine if you will, having the power to see what is happening anywhere in the world, and at any past or present time. And that power was shared eventually, to everyone in the world. This was the premise of the book, “The Light of Other Days” by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, which discusses the problems which arise when a wormhole is used for faster-than-light communication. In the novel the authors suggest that wormholes can join points distant either in time or in space and postulate a world completely devoid of privacy as wormholes are increasingly used to spy on anyone at any time in the world’s history.

What’s interesting about the story is it’s parallel to what is happening today in the world around us. Before we get to that however, here’s a short summary of the story.

Hiram Patterson is the founder and CEO of the fictional company OurWorld, who the author styled after a cross between Richard Branson and the controversial media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. His company happens upon the most revolutionary technological breakthrough of the century; the creation of a stable wormhole. Not the promethean-sized wormhole that you could fly spaceships through to get to the other side of the universe. Nor the kind that transports you naked back in time. Or even the kind that opens doors into parallel universes. No, Hiram’s scientists created a minute wormhole, so small it could only be detected through specialized equipment.

At first, they didn’t know what to do with this breakthrough, as it didn’t seem to have any discernable usage other than expanding the niche knowledge of a handful of relativistic physicists. More frustratingly, they discovered that without access to near limitless energy sources, they would never be able to expand the size of the wormhole beyond its minute proportions.

However, OurWorld is a business, hence it’s out to make a buck. So driven by the forceful personality of Hiram Patterson, the scientists eventually found out that although microscopic wormholes were too small to transport anything useful, like a person, they could however transmit data. So they set out to create the WormCam, the world’s ultimate fly-on-the-wall camera. One that sees not only what is happening at the present, but also at anytime in the past.

At this point, Hiram completes his transformation from Richard Branson to Rupert Murdoch and applies the new technology to his own higher purpose: to get exclusives for his media empire. He quickly dial’s back the WormCam’s time viewer to expose the truth of political conspiracies and scandals dating back to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to present. Naturally, the guy makes a mint on his exposés. All the while, politicians struggle to figure out he’s doing it. Although he also reveals fantastic historical nature documentaries, he can’t resist the ultimate reality porn of exposing celebrities and famous personalities sunbathing naked.

The resulting societal changes are dramatic. Politics undergo what can only be described as a complete top to bottom cleansing, with anybody having committed even the smallest indiscretion quitting public office before they become public fodder.

Over time, the scientists miniaturise the technology to produce a portable, mass-marker version of the WormCam. With everybody having access to these devices, even the smallest notion of privacy evaporates for all. Spouses use it to expose affairs. Teachers to expose students cheating. Men to view naked women, women to view naked men. Imagine, what happens with everybody can know everything that another person does, now and throughout their entire past lives. Entire generations of youth even have wormholes embedded into their brains to enable collective minds; the ultimate form of social networking where one is never alone.

By now, you can see where I am headed with this. The story of this all-transforming technology is a mirror of what we see happening with the Internet.

Consumer movements endless exposing every corporate misdeed and government lie.

Every minute of a person’s life and death – Jade Goody style – recorded and exposed in gory, pornographic detail for people to dive into, comment on, praise, rip apart, criticise and fantasize over in orgiastic delight.

The complete exposure of private and public lives, thoughts, friendships and personal and professional networks exposed on an up-to-the minute basis on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The ordinary, the extraordinary, the unbelievable, the absurd, the bizarre, the inspiring and the provocative behaviour of millions of people, fictional and real, captured and viewed by millions every second over YouTube, Google Video, Tudou and other social video sites. We even see the collective mind in action thanks to Wikipedia.

The Internet is our very own personal wormhole to every aspect of the world. Thanks to Google Earth, we use it to see remote far-away places, or even far away stars. Thanks to Google Maps and Street View, we use to find out where we are, and view everything from our own neighbourhood, to those of neighbours we will never know nor see. We use it to discover truth and fiction in equal measure. Employers use it to check up on their competition and their own employees, while employees use it to check up on their colleagues and employers alike, both as individuals and as corporations. And naturally, marketers use it to continuously try to understand what it is that we all want, and how to exploit that knowledge to either the consumer’s and the corporation’s mutual gain, though more typically to the corporation’s gain at the expense of the consumer, the environment and the rest of the world.

The now continuous debate over privacy already seems somehow pointless. Because thanks to the Internet, we have willingly surrendered privacy in favour of collective knowledge and truth in the hope and desire that by participating in the bold experiment called the Internet, we will carve a brave new world out of the carcass of the dinosaur we have to grown up with. One which is somehow kinder, more honest, less greedy, and more equitable than the world it replaces.

INQ Hong Kong Launch event

So it seems that social media has gone mobile in a big way. Yes, we all heard of those great Facebook and Twitter apps for the iPhone that just work brilliantly. And yes, you can get Facebook on other handsets as well. However, the mobile upstart, Team INQ has put together a nice piece of kit for the ever struggling mobile operator 3 that does social networking one better. It’s called the INQ¹.

The Gadget Inspectors have appropriately fallen in love with this device, as seen in their video.  And there are some pretty good reasons for it as well. Anyone who has worked in the device side of the industry will tell you that mobile phones are all about design, design and design. Not just the outside, but the software as well. 

Given that the handset itself doesn’t look that much different than let’s say, the Nokia E66, just what is it that makes this interesting? I can already hear the echoes across the blogosphere. “Ah, it’s just a gimmick!” In part, it is just a gimmick, albeit a well done one. The gimmick is that unlike Nokia, INQ has taken it’s UI to task. The icons for all of the embedded social applications are in the main screen menu, making it a quick flip to get what you want. While Nokia’s applications are well and truly hidden in submenu’s and folders. 

On top of that, there is excellent integration with its applications. Java has long been a drawback of mobile phones in that it’s a ringfenced application with limited integration. Here however, the integration is smartly done. I especially like being able to utilise Facebook as my addressbook and the automatic push of Twitter posts. It would be interesting to see just how difficult it is to set up all of one’s social accounts on the phone; an area where the iPhone excels, and the others struggle.

Packaging is another area that INQ has gotten right. While Nokia, Samsung and Sony’s packaging is sometimes stylistic and fashionable, they can also be downright corporate looking. 

With the INQ¹, they sought to “create an object of beauty – something to cherish, not chuck. All too often, packaging needs up in landfills, or recycling bins at best. While we’d like people to keep it, use it and treasure it. When we design our handsets we remix and edit internet services so that the play best on a mobile. Similarly, we remixed the idea of a box and made it into a place to display artwork.  The box art, and the illustrations on the help cards, come from people whose work we really like,” states INQ’s blog. 

The artist for this box is Yuko Shimizu who is also credited on the box itself. Other artists whose work will soon adorn future INQ handsets can be found here.

It’s all very reminiscent of the early part of the century when Nokia partnered with famous designers to create their phones. These so called Limited Editions always sold out even before hitting the stores. It does make one wonder why Nokia didn’t spin off a business producing just limited edition handsets for the design conscious, like they did with the Vertu for the ultra-rich. Instead, new upstarts are taking the thunder away from the market leaders. 

For INQ’s part however, despite a fair start, they have a long road ahead. First off, they are already a generation behind the others, who are already moving towards touch-screen phones. Secondly, their distribution is far too limited, being solely available through the mobile operator 3. Thirdly, putting one’s eggs in the social networking basket may sound like smart business today, but who can say which platforms will dominate in the next two years. And eventually, the majors will learn from these upstarts, take their own UI’s to task and reinvent them from the ground up. Or just buy out INQ. Anybody want to vote for a Sony INQ3?