Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

It's nice to see people reading your copy, and knowing it's getting plenty of exposure. That's why I was pleased to see Gemalto giving out copies of their house magazine, The Review, at MWC in Barcelona last week - as it contains an interview I did with IBM's cloud computing folk (go straight to page 28) and a column (on page 34) on mobile identity I wrote while at the Internet Identity Workshop last year.

With more than 30,000 people at the show, there'll be plenty who've now read my thoughts on just why we get so attached to our mobile phones, and why the smartphone is a sensor platform that helps mediate identity and context.

There’s one device that knows more about me than anything else does – my mobile phone. It knows who I talk to, and when I do it. It knows where I am, and when I’m going to be there. It knows who I’m meeting, what I’m meeting them for. It holds my social network, my business network, well, pretty much everything. It’s my life in my pocket, and it goes everywhere I go.

My mobile phone has become my identity, and my context. That’s a blessing and a curse. I have one place where I can find everything, and one place where I can lose everything. If my battery is flat, I lose that memory boost, and I can’t get it back. And what if it gets stolen? A stranger can be walking through my life, seeing my LinkedIn contacts, pillaging my online relationships and my favourite web sites and applications, taking advantage of any stolen passwords, destroying my finances and my reputation.

And now you get the chance to join them (without running the gauntlet of Barcelona's pickpockets and bag thieves) by just clicking on this link and then scrolling through the pages of the PDF edition of the magazine.

I rather like what they did with the image of me on the column, somehow they made me look suitably Byronesque!