ABSTRACT
If you keep an eye out for the handiwork of mobile device and services marketers, especially in Europe and Asia, it is hard to miss visions of media pouring out of tiny gadgets. Bus stop posters, magazine ads, and signs in store windows show all sorts of exciting things happening on tiny screens: singers crooning, soccer players kicking, jazz artists trumpeting. Musical notes float out of mobile headsets, and the celebratory cry of “Goooooooaaaal….” meanders from a cell phone earpiece right across and off the edge of the page. To be sure, you also see images of happy people with phones to their ears, presumably talking to happy friends and family on the other side. But it is hard to escape the idea that if all you are doing with your mobile phone is making voice calls and (outside the U.S.) sending text messages, you can look forward to doing something much cooler with it.
