Voices from the Past - The possibilities

Voices from the past | Description | Case Study | Press | The Possibilities | Student Reports

The Voices from the Past project addresses a serious quandary for journalists. Mobile phones are the most widely used communications technology in the United States – nearly 90% of Americans carry one. But the vast majority of those phones cannot receive the Web-based graphics and information that media outlets prefer. The smartphones that can do that represent just 17% of the cell phones in the U.S. The rest just communicate primarily with voice and text.

Voices from the Past project bench on the MKT Trail.

(The iPhone, by the way, accounts for just 4.3% of our phones)

Most of us in the mass media would like to address the mobile boom by offering an iPhone or Android app, but that clearly misses the bulk of our audience.

Voices from the Past tests a technology that uses simple voice messages that are tied to text – in this case signs.  It is, in a sense, radio on demand. It was developed to replace the rental audio units that museums use for tours, but with the help of Dave Asheim at Guide by Cell, I adapted it for the media.

Any newspaper or broadcast outlet could do what I did – find some sort of historical or tourist trail and place signs keyed to the recorded information. But that is just the start. Consider:

• Planning and zoning stories: Place temporary signs at the location so that people could see firsthand what was at issue. Perhaps link them to a story in the newspaper or on a Web page or to an artist's rendering of what the new development will look like. The response function could let citizens express their opinion of the plans
• Catastrophe coverage. Rubber-neckers are a fact of life and often cause traffic problems or return from the scene with terribly skewed information. A series of recordings tied either to a printed story or to signs could guide drivers to appropriate places and the explain to them accurately what they are seeing.
• Festival coverage: Every town has a Wedding Fest, a fair or something similar. Ad-driven coverage could let people hear from the vendors themselves without having to actually push their way up to the booth.

Then there is the text message extension. Text messages are by far the most popular non-voice use of mobile technology. Many news outlets offer text “alerts” that send a brief message to subscribers.

But like Twitter, the messages are limited to 140 characters. That offers little detail – unless the last few characters are a telephone number linked to a Guide By Cell number. Then the news consumer could call to get a longer audio report about the incident. Better yet, those reports can be recorded in the field from the reporter’s own cell phone. That would allow live coverage of say, a fire, that is delivered to cell phones all over the region.

First, however, we must offer a proof-of-concept. If the Voices from the Past project is accepted by the public, we will know that we have something worth pursuing.