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In the past year battles have been fought inside and outside some of the most highly utilized public transport in Hong Kong: KMB, the Kowloon Motor Bus Company. These are battles different from the physical fight for space and seats usually seen during the rush hours when people hurl in and out for work and home. KMB is the first to introduce a Multi-Media On- Board (MMOB) service in its line of public buses, providing a variety of on-board information including education, finance, entertainment, advertisement, games -- the variety is building. While some passengers inside may be busy locating the best position to view the programs offered by RoadShow (the company providing the programs) some other passengers outside are making complaints about the volume and content of the programs. The result of these battles is, after a period of “silent-movies” in the lower deck of these buses, the volume has been turned up again to a “reasonable” level.
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Watching the complaints and the adjustments going on is interesting not just because it reveals the variety of expectations people have about an experience as ordinary as a bus ride. What do people want to do (or not want to do) when they are trapped in a confined vehicle moving away from or toward their homes? That would certainly be an interesting research topic not only for the bus companies and other businesses involved, but also for anyone who is interested in human behavior. The focus of this paper, however, is put on the interaction between the MMOB and the consumers, in this case the passengers. Because of the special nature and scope of the MMOB services, the conventional consumer-commodity interaction has undergone a change, and passengers on board may find themselves undertaking a highly unusual experience in terms of being a consumer and a passenger.
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Although on-board information and entertainment services are not entirely new, 1 its route of participation in people’s life is one of increasing intimacy. In Hong Kong, before the launching of MMOB in the local buses, only travelers going outside Hong Kong will have the chance to enjoy in-flight entertainment services; and people seeing friends off or meeting friends may take the Airport Express, which also features similar on-board information services. Now, passengers of public buses and mini-buses can also enjoy a wide range of on-board information services.
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This sense of intimacy comes in various forms. The vehicle itself, designed for maximum capacity, allows for very little space between fellow passengers and between passengers and the TV screen. The fact that LCD display TV screens are only installed in fully air-conditioned buses further enhances the feeling of confinement. Passengers on-board exist in an isolated realm because the temperature, the air, the sounds, the smell, the atmosphere and the movement within are all conditioned. Besides the physical proximity between passengers and the broadcasting screens, intimacy is also created by the nature and content of the pre-recorded programs. There is always something for every kind of commuters: advertisements of products, information about performances and movie trailers, informational and educational features, tailor-made documentary-drama by social service groups, fashion, MTV and short features offering financial advice. What is presented is essentially a condensed version of the local world like a catalogue, together with means to get connected to that local world.
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This alternative local community represented on the TV screen replaces the real local community that is passing by outside the confine of the bus. Boarding the bus, passengers are forced to inhabit this virtual local community that is still one step away and untouchable yet. Ironically this enforced temporary isolation claims to provide all sorts of connection to the real world in its program contents.
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If passengers are consumers, then their desire is heavily manipulated by this intimacy and distancing at the same time. TV viewers and internet surfers who are under their own roof can at least make a choice of whether to participate in this alternative reality, and whether to let his/her desires be brought to various objects on the screen. Passengers on board the moving vehicles have no choice except that between participating and making an even louder noise than the broadcasting. In this forced participation, they are fed images of the objects of desire, and ways to desire those desires - an address, a telephone number, and an Internet address.
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The tension between intimacy and distance is not only exhibited in the contents of the program and the physical setting. Passengers’ interaction with the multi-media programs also creates a problematic space that stands in the threshold between intimacy and isolation. Advertisements of various kinds encourage decision-making on board the moving vehicles, a decision that is normally made in the private domestic space or publicly in the department stores. With passengers on the same vehicle watching the same advertisements, it is possible to hear total strangers right next to you discussing whether to buy something of an intimate and personal nature. Besides shopping, the entertainment information offered might lead to people picking up their mobile phone calling a number to register for the participation in a game show to be broadcasted to the public community, or playing games that can be reached directly and spontaneously through the mobile phone. The connection is so immediate that participants can register, play the game, and know the results and prizes they get all within the duration of one trip.
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Passengers are thus kept busy throughout the whole trip. While the earlier generations of telecommunication technology claims to release people from their workplace by extending the communication network from the office to the home, now with the provision of immediate information and connection, the realm of the private home is also extended to include a place like the public local bus. Interestingly enough, although with each new generation of telecommunication technology we can see an extension of boundaries and a stretching of possibilities, the concurrent spatial expansion does not render the user of that space more in power or control, contrary to expectation.
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Invasion of telecommunication network into the domestic area breaks into the conventional privacy of the home and of the family. It has already become quite a problem now that new computer viruses are born periodically, threatening to wipe out more and more of the information we keep both in our professional and our private capacities. The more one lets his or her personal life be invaded by the invisible networking, the more s/he is threatened to be ousted from this traditional security a home provides. MMOB services further intensify the collapse of this domestic security as potential users, in this case passengers who use a bus service but who are coerced into participating in this pre-recorded virtual world of intimacy, are encouraged to do what they usually do at home out there in the open. The idea of the home has grown to dissipation because the boundaries have become hazy and unreachable.
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Improvement of information technology not only takes human beings out of their homes, where they behave as appropriate to that small unit, but it strips them of their identity as individuals who react in different ways in relation to their family members. People become consumers, their identity formed only in relation to what services and products they use and buy from the information offered. The multi-media on-board services have turned the passengers into consumers distinct from each other only in terms of the choice of services they have made. The human community as a network of relationships among individuals is heavily challenged and broken down into a collection of individuals each of whom has access to various communication networks.
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A new type of family relationship arises out of this phenomenon, and it resides in a virtual home whose boundary is formed by the users of these networks. Earlier this year, before the Oscar Awards results were known, RoadShow launched an on-line game in support of the film Crouching Tigers, Hidden Dragon.2 Passengers were given exciting clips of the film to view, the details of the game, which of course includes the RoadShow homepage address where they could access the game. The moving images on the TV screen referred to the film medium, and encouraged the use of the online services to participate in the game. The various media have successfully formed a coalition in the MMOB services such as the RoadShow while the viewers are tied down to their seats, using the network services that expand the boundary of the virtual family of information technology. In so doing, the individual participants of the MMOB have removed themselves from the seats of the consumer and landed themselves on the seats of the consumed, only to facilitate the extension of the family of information technology.
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1 MMOB services are new to a large number of Hong Kong people, though. Not counting in-flight entertainment services for travelers, only the Airport Express run by the MTR (a territory-wide network of underground railway system) going between the Chek Lap Kok International Airport and the city center of Hong Kong has it installed. The variety of programs in the Airport Express network is more modest than what is provided by the RoadShow Holdings Limited.
2 RoadShow launched online games in support of the film when it was announced as a candidate for several major awards in the Oscars in 2001.
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12 | | Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Amy Lee. "Consumer, or the Consumed? MMOB reverses consumer's identity" M/C Reviews 25 Oct. 01. [your date of access] <http://www.media-culture.org.au/reviews/features/interactive/alee.html>.
Chicago style:
Amy Lee, "Consumer, or the Consumed? MMOB reverses consumer's identity," M/C Reviews 25 Oct. 01, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/reviews/features/interactive/alee.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Amy Lee. (2000) Consumer, or the Consumed? MMOB reverses consumer's identity. M/C Reviews 25 Oct. 01. <http://www.media-culture.org.au/reviews/features/interactive/alee.html> ([your date of access]). | |
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