I opened my post titled 'Mobile Zen' with: "Zen means waking up to the present moment. That is, perceiving a mobile moment exactly as it is, rather than through the filter of our ideas and opinions of being free from our fixed past. When you're talking, just talk; when you're texting just text, when you're mobile
searching, just find; and so on." over at Mobile Messaging 2.0 for this week. The focus has been "What isn't mobile" and after writing it I thought Mobile Point View readers would enjoy it as well. You can read it there, or the rest here....
What then is Mobile Zen?
Consider
"Mobile Zen is the instantaneous experience of catching a radio link, untethered. Since the experience of mobile communication is one of being free from physical links, our bonds and exchanges of communicating are constantly in flux, with what we really are only defined by the experience of the moment, the act of coupling. Ask the big question "What is (or is not) mobile?" then one must answer sincerely and honestly "Don't know" since the experience is constantly changing.
Mobile Zen is something that is only happening spontaneously while you are doing it. All of life within the mobile context then is constantly in a state of change. Every airborne bit or byte in the universe is somewhere different every millionth of a second.
In fact, anything that we can explain within Mobile Zen must be past-tense. What was then is past, what is now is present, and different. Even if its about communicating our most immediate feelings, thoughts or photos, it is not the same experience the second after it passes through our minds, across our lips or through our finger tips.
Mobile Zen is Constantly Changing
Think of your view of "what is mobile?" Is it what it was a second ago, or a year ago, or what it is now? And what will it be tomorrow? Different than now, very different than yesterday. In fact the moment we say the word “mobile" and "view", the view has already changed into something new. Human neural structure enables over 12,000 impressions per second spread across our physical senses and coordinated by abstract intellect. So, what is the 'Mobile Reality then?
Isn’t it always a very limited view of being connected only through some, any--all, mobile communications which frames our experience at any given moment? And that which we are aware of, becomes our own narrow impression of the world itself. As we have defined mobile in the past will it necessarily change in the future? After all, ultimate untethered mobile may be found in the future through "inside out" networks. Networks where the node may be connected to a fiber network, but the architecture sits in your home, not within a geographic cell of a "macro-network" of base stations and towers. Such will be the way of femto cells. Are any of our views of Mobile then actually true in the absolute sense of the word, or are they all just our subjective impressions, based on an individual experience of what we are perceiving in an untethered moment?
Obviously, with this in mind, there are a wide array of free from physical links possible at each moment, through a broadening number of nodes; therefore there is no limitation on the number of mobile "existences", and in any absolute sense, existence itself is defined only as being untethered, unlinked, free from concrete connections, yet still coupled in the intercourse of communication.
Discard Past Orthodoxies
How then can we experience the mobile existence? The mobile experience simply IS. The problem is that we are usually trying to create our own model of the world based on where we sit. the descriptor of being "unconnected." In the US, the word is "cellular" focusing on the technical infrastructure of being without a physical link. In Europe, the term is "mobile" conveying being out and about, untethered and unfettered in how you communicate (my preference). In Japan, the term is "Keitai" literally meaning "snug" conveying intimate fit and communications portability.
Then as a student of Mobile Zen, the epiphany is acceptance that when it comes to mobile, "All is one, and one is all”. And simply mobile is mobile when it isn't tethered, any node sitting in your hand from phone to Palm-top. The Mobile Zen reflects a simplicity that draws our attention to that which is essential, stripping away the extra. All things connected are not mobile. You have now reached the experience of Mobile Enlightenment and Mobile Nirvana.
Yet, lest not forget the teachings of Lao Tzu, "they who tell do not know; they who know do not tell."
So, did I capture the Zen of Mobile? What do you think?