The Six Immutable Laws of Mobile Business

CHAPTER 3

IMMUTABLE LAW NO. 3: MOBILITY EMPOWERS

“I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.”

—Napoleon Bonaparte

Our discussion of the Third Immutable Law of Mobile begins within the confines of a dark, damp, windowless, cramped solitary confinement cell in prison. Why prison, and why solitary confinement? Because this is the only way to grasp the true power the mobile platform brings to users, irrespective of race, nationality, creed, or socioeconomic level.

Except for a few extraordinary individuals, such as monks and ascetics, human beings find the thought of being alone in a prison cell upsetting if not terrifying. Studies conducted over the past five decades on inmates across a number of different countries and regions—including Europe, North America, Africa, and Australasia—all reached similar conclusions: solitary confinement has measurable, long-term negative effects on the human mind. These negative effects are experienced at the human rather than cultural level.

A group of Danish psychologists conducted one of the largest of these studies, comparing over 200 male and female prisoners between the ages of 18 and 60 being held in solitary confinement with those in regular prison cells. They found that solitary was far more detrimental to mental health. Specifically, prisoners thus isolated were much more likely to develop a psychological disorder while “on remand” than ...