The Mobile Wave

As part of my recent splurge of buying mobile media books, I also picked up Michael Saylor's The Mobile Wave (2012, Vanguard), to see what the corporate booster take on all this might be. I had seen it mentioned in a recent emailling from EPIC, which mentioned that the book ignores issues of privacy. Anyway, Saylor's idea is how everything will change given mobile technologies. I've only just dipped in to Saylor's book, but it's already rife with the discourse of technological inevitability (it's coming, get used to it); even the use of "wave" makes it seem a natural phenomenon. And, of course, there's the technological neutrality ("These fundamental forces can either be harnessed for good or bad" p. xi). None of which I'm surprised to see.

But the clearest clue about what direction much of the book may take was made clear early on when he is giving the example of how iTunes "reinvented music" and changed the industry. "Between 2003 and 2007, more than 2,700 record stores vanished, freeing up real estate and capital that could be used for other things" (p. 7). Well, that's one way of looking at the loss of 2,700 businesses. Good thing we got rid of all those fuddy duddy record stores that were standing in the way of new development and investment. Think of what we can do with that mallspace or old store fronts.

On to the rest of the book.