{"id":3990,"date":"2015-09-05T16:38:16","date_gmt":"2015-09-05T20:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=3990"},"modified":"2015-09-05T16:38:16","modified_gmt":"2015-09-05T20:38:16","slug":"mobi-rising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2015\/09\/05\/mobi-rising.html","title":{"rendered":".MOBI Rising"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tYesterday\u2019s post to Sorabji.MOBI<\/a>\u00a0looks funny\u00a0to me now. I already forgot about the content therein, as the goal was only\u00a0to force me into remembering how to simply sit and write for a period of time, uninterrupted, regardless of the niggling concern that I am flooding a world drowning in text matter with more needless drivel.<\/p>\n

What I find mildly funny now is that the paragraph line breaks were chopped, making the avalanche of text matter appear that much more droning.<\/p>\n

I intend to clean up Sorabji.MOBI and integrate it into Sorabji.NYC, and get back out of doors more with the big tablet and mobile keyboard. The charter of Sorabji.MOBI has always been that all content posted there comes from a mobile device, or anything except a desktop computer. This is a back-handed reference to the original intention of the .MOBI top-level domain, which was meant to be a realm where all content is formatted in a way pleasing to cell phones and mobile devices. That initiative never took off, and today serving a mobile-formatted site off a .MOBI URL is kinda like having an @aol.com e-mail address, only slightly more curious. I turned that original .MOBI charter around by making it a platform for mobile delivered content, not necessarily mobile formatted.<\/p>\n

There used to be quite a series of obstacles between posting from a cell phone to a web site. It was just complicated, in the spirit of\u00a0configuring Trumpet Winsock for dialup access to the Internet.<\/p>\n

My goal of making a part Sorabji.MOBI a receptacle for calls made from payphones was only partly successful, as the logistics weighed down the ability to simply focus on content. The messages also became depressing for me to listen to.<\/p>\n

I have maintained another related project of capturing sounds of subway buskers and street performers as heard through the rugged, monochrome sound world of the landline payphone<\/a>. There is some good stuff in there, though that crackly sound world is not for everybody.<\/p>\n

An idea from a couple of years sounds inspiring once again: to immerse myself in the city\u2019s public spaces, those corporate zoning necessities which require certain large buildings to set aside tables and chairs for anyone to use. Some of these spaces are continuously filled to capacity and brimming with a transient spirit of the camaraderie of strangers. Others are depressing shitholes characterized by mystery odors and stains to explain.<\/p>\n

Since the Rose Main Reading Room appears to be closed for the duration (what a loss, what a freakin\u2019 loss to the city) these public spaces hold more interest to me than they might otherwise. I miss typing for long stretches of time, engulfing the planet with oceans of text, accompanied by the indifference of strangers.<\/p>\n

At an electronics store yesterday I was impressed at the abundance of keyboards designed for tablets and mobile devices. When I started doing Sorabji.MOBI in 2005 such keyboards were not so common, and good ones were expensive and hard to find. In those days when I would set up shop at a caf\u00e9\u00a0or at a library I almost never failed to get comments from strangers regarding my “totally cool”\u00a0use of a foldable, full-size keyboard for typing text matter into a cell phone. Today that is a common sight to see, though more typically\u00a0with larger tablets and hybrid devices and not as much the so-called \u201csmart phones\u201d with their relatively paltry screen real estate.<\/p>\n

So many screens surround us, screens of enormity, screens of smaller size fill spots on walls the way paintings or photographs might have done 2 decades ago. Screens everywhere demand attention.<\/p>\n\n