Social Media on the Road

In the future, everyday life in traffic will be intricately meshed with city life. Today motorways, cities and streets are places where we spend a considerable amount of time, and where a large number of everyday encounters between people occur. Any road user's journey coincides with hundreds or even thousands of others. This book unpacks the details of the practical achievements involved in socially engaging with people at high speed. Although, generally speaking, these encounters are brief and interaction is slight, the recent emergence of mobile technologies offers opportunities to support drivers and passengers beyond just helping them to reach their destination. New social media could enhance interaction in traffic making life on the road more interesting and meaningful. Such innovative applications could include car stereos that share music amongst drivers; digital games that interact with the landscape passing outside the car windows, or with passengers in surrounding cars; message systems that allow drivers to help each other; and web applications that allow motorcyclists to socialize on the road. Social Media on the Road - The Future of Car Based Computing provides a bridge between research in transport planning and traffic technology, and new media areas such as Computer Human Interaction and Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Those studying and researching in the areas of human computer interaction in mobile use contexts, and those interested in developing new forms of mobile applications and services will find this book an excellent resource. Oskar Juhlin is Associate Professor and Director of the Mobile Life VinnExcellence Centre at Stockholm University and Interactive Institute. 'This book represents a pioneering and key research work that examines the future of transportation being merged with communication and interactive media. It also provides a glimpse of the future potential of mixed reality entertainment for children and family on the move. It is essential for scientists, designers, and engineers working on mobile social media, as well as for business people looking for new potential urban transport media services.' Professor Adrian D. Cheok, Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University.

Oskar Juhlin is the Studio Director of the Mobility Studio at the Interactive Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. He is assistant director and senior researcher at the newly started Mobile Life VinnExcellence Center at Stockholm University. He is Associative Professor ('Docent') in applied information technology at the IT-university in Göteborg. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology of technology at Tema, Department of Technology and Social Change, Linköping University. He has also a Master of Science in Civil Engineering at Luleå Technical University. He has been a research fellow at the Section for Science and Technology Studies at Göteborg University, and researched at the Viktoria Institute in the Mobile Informatics programme. His current approach is design research oriented, which combine studies of mobile practices (so called ethnographic fieldwork) and design sessions to generate new mobile applications. The thematic research approach, which has been pursued during the last five years, is called the Interactive Road. It points to, on the one hand, the importance of social interaction in road use for coordination as well as for community life, and on the other hand, new technical possibilities with emerging mobile media to provide better tools and increased experiences in mobile situations. The results have been influential on the area of interaction design, computer-human interaction, support for collaboration, physical computing, games research, and mobile applications. The research agenda has been established and pursued by Oskar Juhlin and the Mobility studio at the Interactive Institute in Stockholm since 2001. Oskar has also been responsible for supervising Ph D students, securing funding and so on.