It's getting phone crazy. The current toy-in-my-pocket buzz is around bluejacking. This is a new, fun-twisted use for phones with Bluetooth communication technology installed. 
If you don't know, Bluetooth is a system of near-field [30 feet or so] wireless communication initially invented in order that electronic components in a room could communicate without being wired together. The original vision was something like "no more printer cables!" It has been the next big thing that hasn't quite happened for several years, but now looks finally to be having its day.
Anyway, high-end mobile phones now come with Bluetooth. And people have figured out how to use it to send messages anonymously to other Bluetooth phones in the area. It's the dawn of drive-by messaging--someone nearby sends you a message, but you don't know who. Put Bluetooth and hijacking together and you get bluejacking.
But why, you ask? I think it has to do with the fact that as social beings we continually adjust our presentation of self to fit the situation. [Check Erving Goffman on this.] We're one person in public, another in private. New media communication technologies are playing mix-and-match with the conventions associated with these many personas and their contexts. In Goffman's parlance, we're now often revealing our "backstage" selves "frontstage." That is, when at the computer or phone we seems to be in a private spaces--no eyes are watching me now--that are often technologically projected into a public spaces. This inner self is impish, impulsive, transgressive. And generally endearing. There are scores of new media technologies [not least of which are blogs] that are enabling our often silly private selves to escape the parental function of the ego. In short, bluejacking appeals to the emergent technology-enabled inner child in all of us. Its just another new media interference effect jumbling public and private spaces.
Naturally, a new site has popped up where you can learn more about bluejacking and no doubt buy a tee-shirt--the above is my suggestion, free to you as a Ratchet .png download.
"Using a phone with Bluetooth, you can create a phonebook contact and write a message, eg. 'Hello, you've been bluejacked, in the 'Name' field. Then you can search for other phones with Bluetooth and send that phonebook contact to them. On their phone, a message will popup saying "'Hello, you've been bluejacked' has just been received by Bluetooth" or something along those lines. For most 'victims' they will have no idea as to how the message appeared on their phone. So, personalised messages like 'I like your pink top' and the startled expressions that result is where the fun really starts."
One bluejacker is quoted as saying: "not knowing whether the victim will react in an amused/confused or negative way gives me an adrenaline rush." That "the fun really starts" with the "adrenaline rush" seems to make my point above. [Note to self: communications revolutions, like armies, travel on their mental bellies.]
"By the way if, you're wondering where the Bluetooth name originally came from, it's named after a Danish Viking and King, Harald Bltand (translated as Bluetooth in English), who lived in the latter part of the 10th century. Harald Bltand united and controlled Denmark and Norway (hence the inspiration on the name: uniting devices through Bluetooth). He got his name from his very dark hair which was unusual for Vikings, Bltand means dark complexion. However a more popular, (but less likely reason), was that Old Harald had a inclination towards eating Blueberries , so much so his teeth became stained with the colour, leaving Harald with a rather unique set of molars." [Source]
Even the name came from an impish impulse.
Good point about self-presentation. Perhaps a historical route is in order, and wireless is taking us back to the 1980s, where we first started noticing the psychological matrix of the screen (Turkle, of course, is an early, key source). We're back when we noticed flaming, trolling, and intense erotic writing appearing by text, and wondering about what's disabled, reconfigured, reenabled by the semidisembodiment of networking. Bluejacking seems to ramp this up further, in that the physical presence of the bluejacked is palpable, sensually evident, and often socialized in a visible way. The short range of Bluetooth (as opposed to other spectral venues) heightens its immediacy.
Next step, 1: Bluejacking meets augmented reality (Spohrer's Worldboard), as someone uses my device
to annotate my space.
Next step, 2: stories in and about this. Where's the first bluejacking suspense narrative?
Posted by: Bryan Alexander | 23 November 2003 at 10:11 AM