You can always change this.

It seems that joint attention has been well studied in several interesting domains. For example, development and evolutionary studies (do not mix with international development) have confirmed that our elaboration of the skills related to joint attention are our main advantage against other species. Other major contributions are then from monkey research. Somebody even studied dolphins. The latest attempts focus on implementing architectures that imitate the shared visual attention mechanisms! So we have robots, to top the bunch.

Now, we will be researching programmers’ shared (visual) attention. Imagine that extreme title of this post as an upcoming paper title!

According to news, Lapland’s entrepreneurs tremble for safety should phone-lines be dumped . The transfer of by-wire services to wireless is a process going on for a while in Finland. Especially in scarcely populated areas, the cost of keeping 50 000 lines up are high, while the transfer to gsm and wireless services is not.

It is a logical step from the operators. However, conventional phone is often the only connection a grandma living alone in Kainuu area has with the rest of world. Previously during this year we have been doing some usability research with computer users of age 70+, living in Kainuu area. Seniors use the traditional phone, all of them have serious troubles using a mobile phone (not mentioning using a computer). Answering a mobile phone-call is maybe ok, but anything behind that is a pain. Now, the lines will one day become deaf, and the only alternative is a mobile phone?

Consider this anecdotal situation we witnessed: a grandma loses her mobile phone at home. She uses her normal phone to phone her son to phone her back on her mobile phone so she can find it when it’s ringing. This illustrates the attitude well, a super small, hated, mobile phone, left somewhere. Soon, it will be the only connection to the rest of world.

PS: I hope there is a thick line to Justus’ office.