In late 2008, I was in Berlin doing a mobile workshop at the Web 2.0 Expo. Having never been to Berlin, I did what I always do in new cities that I visit—I explored. I enjoy just walking aimlessly around a new city with no particular destination or plan. Not only is it a relaxing way to see the sights, but I find amazing things that aren’t on any tour or in any guidebook. There was just one problem with my plan: everything I explored was in German.

Because I know only about five and a half words in German, this made exploration more challenging. Although I really enjoyed seeing Berlin, my first of couple days there were an empty experience. I could certainly see what was right in front of me, but I didn’t have any understanding of what I was looking at. I found myself constantly wondering, “What is this place? Who is this a statue of and why is it here? What significance does it play? What are these people doing? Why is this important?”

At the end of my first day, I found myself in my hotel room visiting Wikipedia so that I could read about what I had seen that day. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember all the sites I had seen. The next day was my workshop, so I had only a little time to wander, but I started taking photos of plaques and historical markers with the camera in my phone so I could translate them later that night. I thought it was an inspired idea, but it proved to be too difficult to make out the text and then enter it into an online translator. My third and final full day in Berlin I had the entire day to explore. To make the most of it, I completely gave up on my futile attempt to avoid incurring international data roaming charges and started using my iPhone as my own personal tour guide.

I wandered aimlessly like I did the previous days, but this time, as soon as I found myself in front of an interesting cultural landmark, I pulled out my phone and started using the location features of the device to detect my location and show me information, in English, about the nearby sites and how far away they were from my precise location. I would read the history of the landmark, what it meant to the German people, and learn about other nearby landmarks that were similar. My day of sightseeing, the locations I visited, and the experiences I had were defined by the information I received on my mobile device.

There I was, the geekiest tourist you’ve ever seen, standing in front of a great historical landmark, looking down at my phone reading the Wikipedia entry about it (see FIG 4-1).

It might have appeared stupid to others and maybe it made me stand out as a tourist; if it did, I didn’t care. My experience of Berlin was immensely richer because I had an understanding, or context, and I was experiencing it in my immediate surroundings. The irony is that as a “mobile guy,” it would take me several months to realize that my experience was almost the perfect example of mobile context.