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January 26, 2007, 03:58 PM ET
Mixed Reviews for 'MoSoSo'
“MoSoSo” is a lousy term for a technology that’s supposed to make a huge cultural impact. It sounds more like a boutique coffee, or Peter Gabriel’s latest worldbeat-infused single, maybe, than like what many experts see as “the next big consumer technology shift,” as The Christian Science Monitor puts it.
But campus officials ignore MoSoSo at their own peril. The term — short for “mobile social-networking software” — is catching on, regrettably enough, and the technology itself is even hotter.
Basically, MoSoSo describes cellphones’ ever-increasing ability to combine social-networking tools (like text-messaging or Facebook’s new mobile service) with global-positioning software. That technological confluence can result in some exciting services for students — like tools that let people track their friends’ whereabouts in real time. But some analysts think mobile social networking is a privacy disaster waiting to happen.
Others say MoSoSo could hurt more than students’ privacy. “These technologies are addictive,” Michael Bugeja, a professor of media at Iowa State University, told the Monitor. “With a society that is increasingly amusing and distracting itself to death, what’s at stake is nothing less than the collective conscience.”
Categories: Student-Life
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