The Final project proposal

Major Studio2 - Interactivity / Ji Sun Lee (Sun) 03/01/2005

The Final project proposal:
Exploring broadcasting and video power in next media

I am studying ubiquitous computing, especially the area between telecommunication and broadcasting because I want to find out how the future media that each person could hold or use everywhere affects an influence in everyday life in order to understand how our life style and social relationship will change and become advanced.

1) motivation
One of my friends in Korea turns on the DMB(Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) phone to watch the morning news when he wakes up in the morning in spite of having a nice HD TV in his living room. Moreover, my young cousin does her school work using a cell phone on the bus, exchanges text messages and pictures with her friends, and never goes out without her cell phone. People are as enthusiastic about getting their own cell phone as having their own telephone and television at home a long time ago. Moreover, the cell phone is absorbing other media’s functions and being a stronger convergence media. Among the functions, the broadcasting would be the most powerful and important function and content in the cell phone. When the media allows people exchange the video data in real time, they would not need to communicate with plain text or audio, because people are always eager for real communication and information with video and audio like in the real physical world. I guess this kind of media affects our life and society as much as television technology affected it before.

2) thesis
The cell phone would have not only telecommunication functions, but also broadcasting functions. This is the main phenomenon in recent technology: Verizon started to provide the broadcasting service “Vcast” on the cell phone in the first quarter of this year. In not only the cell phone and but also PDAs, smart phones, and personal laptops, broadcasting will have more meaning than in the television. Interactive technology and different sizes of the screen (like small or huge) of the broadcasting will contribute different meaning: TiVo or Demand television allow people to not watch the whole commercial and wait for the scheduled time. In addition, a camcorder function on the cell phone could provide the power of creating own personal media channels. So, if people have their own media which dangles from them all the time and if they can see and control the same resource in every screen in everyday life, what do they want to use that technology for?

References
Interactive TV in Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_tv
Verizon’s Vcast : http://getitnow.vzwshop.com/vcast.video.learn.do
Ubiquitous Korea : http://www.ittimes.co.kr/en/node.asp?em=M&mcode=200501
SK telecom’s DMB : http://www.sktelecom.com/eng/services/dmb/index.html
NTT DoCoMo’s Interconnected world and Vision 2010 : http://www.nttdocomo.com/