[App}cessorise: Applications for our disposable lifestyle

We live in a disposable society. Wooden cutlery has replaced silver utensils, paper plates have replaced washable tableware and the ubiquitously discarded plastic bag has replaced the canvas and hessian sacks that we might have once carried with us. Despite Gulf and global efforts to get us to reduce our plastic bag waste and recycle, we still live in an increasingly “throwaway” culture.

But disposable items perhaps aren’t such an environmental calamity when it comes to information technology and applications - even though there are issues with server cooling and power consumption by the Internet’s datacentres; and the recycling of old laptops and mobile phones, among others.

A good app (if it’s really good) may survive long enough to be labelled a “legacy application”: one that has been around for ages, despite being potentially outdated, because it “just works”.

However, some applications are disposable. New apps are being created with a temporary or geographic relevance: they only remain relevant for a special event, or when a user happens to be in certain location. There are dedicated apps for live music events, industry conferences, shopping festivals (Dubai knows all about those) to fill the special information needs for these times.

These apps live on a mobile device only for a while before they delete themselves depending on user-set preferences. There are also disposable apps that only engage on a user’s mobile device once a certain location is reached, like when you get to your holiday destination, for example.

Apple is said to have just applied to patent the term “Location Specific Content”, so - whether it wins that claim or not - you know that this stuff is really happening. Location Specific Content apps (or whatever they will be known as) will drive specific content to your smartphone, tablet or even laptop based upon your location - and then disappear when you leave the area.

As Microsoft, Apple and the Android/Linux community start to accommodate more disposable apps, we may see “Temporary App Settings” become a natural part of the options that we are comfortable with, just like WiFi on/off. Museums are a good place for disposable apps - New York’s Museum of Modern Art is one of the first places with a location-specific app - as are holiday destinations, national parks or major city zones and the trend is growing.

Users will have to remember to download them first, but will be reminded to do this by QR code scanners and NFC (Near Field Communication) logos and tags as they become more prevalent. They will encourage users to simply “tap and download” these ‘disposable’ apps immediately where they have been put in place.

Apps of this kind can already be seen in the Gulf. While perhaps not quite as temporary as they might become in the future, there are apps to serve dedicated locations and provide users with location-specific information.

Users are already encouraged to download the official app for The Dubai Mall if they want to maximise their shopping experiences, or so we are told. This app provides interactive maps to help pin point the location of favourite stores, entertainment venues and restaurants. There is also a complete mall directory with every store’s information, updated in real time – so we might say that the old information is “disposed of”, in the same way as disposable apps are deleted.

The Dubai’s shopping festivals could be another opportunity to develop disposable apps. Users at the festivals could download apps to register for competitions and other special promotions. The Gulf is well suited to benefit from useful, efficient, productive, but ultimately disposable applications and online cloud based services.

So where are we going with these technologies? The disposable retail society is part of how we live now, so applications that serve this consumer trend are set to now help us work better, shop better, relax better and explore better. But then that is what the Internet was all about in the first place - right?