02nd Jun 2004
PANs In The Clouds (Just For Plane Folks)
[idea: "Use the Net to make it easy for people on the same
flight to find each other - before, during, and after"
this is an idea that evolved over a few hours of being stuck
on a plane, gradually getting more coherent towards the end ...
and posted a couple of days later]
I’m 35,345 feet over Cheyenne, Wyoming,
completely cut off from the virtual world, and subsisting on JetBlue crumbs and drops.
Whenever I read an issue of Wired,
especially in one go, I get a sort of hyper buzz of “possibility”.
It’s like a caffeine jolt, renewing my ongoing love of tech and
futurism. The effect is always that much more intense on a plane -
as there’s not much in the way of distractions up here.
Think of Starbucks, or Free Wireless (such as NYCWireless or {lower manhattan wifi… another couple…}) …each giving the potential of a shared real and virtual community for an hour or so.
Now think of a plane. 5 and a half hours from New York to San Francisco. Can’t go anywhere. A plane is a shared real community for an awfully long time.
So, tie them together. What happens when WiFi gets reasonably priced
and widespread on planes?
Howard Rheingold has written a lot about {Flash Mobs} - self-organizing
communities defined by a common time/place/goal. {expand on this}
5 hours. That’s enough time for all sorts of shared “Plane Area
Network” events. My hunch is this: mini-networks of small groups of
3-5 people will emerge, either by prearrangement or spontaneously.
Someone starts a convention, such as using the flight number to name a
chat room, a wiki, or a gaming room. Perhaps a web service acts as
gateway between air passengers and those on the ground (example:
perhaps I would post on today’s “JetBlue 101″ wiki somewhere - leaving
a little note for others on the plane and on the ground to find me).
A few people find each other, realize they’re in the same space, and
start:
- IM’ing (those of social bent)
- social gamers
- organizing an airBay to sell better food to those who forgot to pack
on the ground (a backpack can hold a lot of brownies - you be certain
that a bit of entrepreneurial spirit will hit the skys; after all, what
jurisdiction would a sellers permit be in?) - other instantaneous transactions that don’t belong on a
family-oriented blog (or on this one either)
(and then 20 minutes pass where I can’t write, because I’m eating, and my PowerBook is already larger than the tray table, and my stomach overrules all typing)
I think what I am getting at is a variant of CraigsList for the air. Intersect
easy networking in the air, and a specific way to find each other
(JetBlue, Flight 101, May 31 2004), and you have a transient virtual
community of up to 400 people in the air, and a handful elsewhere
chatting with them (or trying to sell them something ….)
It’s an idea that stems a bit from what happens at O’Reilly
conventions: Wikis spring up, so that attendees start posting “I’ll be
at such and such” before the event, real-time updates happen during
the event, and a sense of historical record exists after. In the
airplane scenario, there’s the whole cross-section of who flies where
and when (and who decided on JetBlue versus United versus Delta, etc.)
There’s a scenario of people finding common interests before a
flight, sharing real and virtual space during, and having a reference
point to go back to later.
So to sum up:
- create a web site that makes it easy to search and post by the combo
of Carrier / Flight / Date. {is “FlyTogether.com” taken?} - this can be effective with just a couple of people per flight.
Unless you have a group flight of MIT undergrads, you’re never going
to get 90% of the passengers pinging a web site to see if there are
any common interests. - temporary email address / IM screenname? Let’s say you are on
CloudSpan airways today, on flight 43, sitting in seat 2b - you
might be contacted at CloudSpan.31May2004.43.2b - that’s all that
is needed to locate a particular person. (The fun starts when
everyone starts swapping seats …)
