There are lots of people for whom being social is very much a real life activity and technology is about getting stuff done. Ambient intimacy makes us feel closer to people we care for but in whose lives we’re not able to participate as closely as we’d like. Knowing the details creates intimacy. It’s a particular way of communicating, phatic communication, that we’ve used in off-line life since we first evolved language. Phatic communication is not about conveying meaning; it’s just about making a connection, being in touch.

Tools for mediated communication were developed to satisfy needs for contact and exchange with others and to help people to achieve more with less effort. They enable us to use time more efficiently – so we can rid ourselves of tiring routines and toilsome processes, expand our range of movement, and have more time for the people and activities that mean the most to us. Does your everyday experience tick all these boxes? If so, then you’re lucky…

What is tinkering? Discovering that certain snack tins can be used to make an antenna that extends the range of your wi-fi network, or using electric toothbrush motors to power small robots. Tinkering is growing in importance as a social movement, as a way of relating to technology and as a source of innovation. Tinkering is about seizing the moment: it is about ad-hoc learning, getting things done, innovation and novelty, all in a highly social, networked environment.

Human beings are hardwired to be curious and to connect and communicate. The problem is that we often don’t know when to stop. Being “always on” transforms communication technology into a weapon of mass distraction. And creates newfangled health risks, like “walk and text” injuries: An estimated one in ten Britons has been hurt walking into a lamppost, rubbish bin, post box and other pedestrians while using a phone.

Both psychologically and physically, young Japanese are never too far from their handsets and the connections to the world that come with the devices. For them, a mobile device is a constant companion, time-killer, game machine, television, organizer, banker, music player and communicator. In short, it’s not terribly necessary to own a PC to be connected digitally. And when the creative urge strikes, the mobile generation uses the tool most comfortable to them: their handsets.

When we started out, we felt that there was a gap – and an interesting opportunity for design – between existing sharing appliances and the mobile music listening that many of us do during the day. Wireless technologies can create new forms of enjoying music in the mobile setting – and might even open up ways of socially engaging with music – because they let people share and discover music that is around them when on the move.

Social interaction, in all its forms, is messy, risky, and complicated. It is responsible for our grandest highs and deepest lows, and our quieter moments as well, of course. Portable technologies allow us to feel this array of feelings and have this range of experiences at the touch of a button. They help us fill the moments of our lives with emotional, accessible, immediate social connectedness: this is alluring and practical, exciting and disappointing, good and bad and neutral.

We are rapidly headed towards a new era of human interaction that is marked by perpetual conversations and perpetual info drip-feed, as enabled by the umbilical of the mobile. With its always-on and always-carried potential, the mobile allows our streams of consciousness and related intentions to be converted instantly into actions with both local and remote effects. Not only does the mobile enable us to seize the moment, but increasingly it is the cause of the moment, adding more and more events to our daily timeline.