Terra Extraneus

Wanna be more popular? It’s easy. Surf over to Popularity Dialer and sign up for a free call. You pick the date and time – like when you’re going to be at a party, elbow-to-elbow with people who will be really impressed that you actually got a call. At the specified time, your phone rings with a taped dialog. You ad lib your half of the conversation and Voila! You’re popular!

This is a joke, right? Not exactly. Popularity Dialer is a real deal. It is the project of two students at New York University’s ITP. ITP? Interactive Telecommunications Program. Am I going too fast? You didn’t even know there was a field of study called “interactive telecommunications?” From ITP’s website:

ITP is different. More than just a graduate school, ITP is a creative ecosystem - a living and interdependent flow of people, projects, ideas and applications all dedicated to exploring and expanding the ability of real people to use media to connect to one another and influence the world around them.

NYU-ITP offers classes on such subjects as “Rapid Protyping for Social Software,” “Social Weather,” “Interactive 3D and Virtual Spaces,” “Internet Civilization,” and “Cellphonia.” You know, a couple of those classes actually sound pretty interesting. I wanna play. Guess you could say ITP is the intersection of geekdom and cool.

But I’m not so sure about Popularity Dialer. Looks to me like most people’s phones already ring enough. It never occurred to me that a ringing phone indicates popularity. When I see/hear somebody’s cell phone ring, my thoughts run to:
* Does the spouse keep you on a pretty short lease?
* Are you a sales profession?
* Time to pay your cell phone bill, huh?
* Could you possibly have chosen a more annoying ring tone?

One thought that never crossed my mind is, “Gee, you sure are popular!” Guess that’s the difference between my 50-ish perspective and that of two kids at NYU.

(Hat Tip: Lifehacker)