In Collision Detection, Clive writes: On Ebay today, someone is auctioning their mobile number "867-5309" -- which was, of course, made hummably famous by the Tommy TuTone hit "Jenny (867-5309)". It's available in the 212 area code. When I checked in, the bids had already hit $730.

When it became easy to register domain names, a new market appeared in domain name swapping and squatting. The same sort of thing, though I think on a much smaller scale, could occur with portable mobile numbers. Then again, since telecom rates have come down so much, the value of a 1-800 number might be far less than the value of a 1-ABC-DEF-GHIJ number if that spelled something of value to an organization.

I read a couple of other blog posts which seem to be relevant: Peter Merholz: … I talked about how people adapt technologies to their own needs, which often run orthogonally, if not in direct oppostion, to the creators' intents. Essentially what happens is that creators put functionality Out There -- what happens after that can be somewhat up for grabs., my etech talk: revenge of the user: Yet, in building these systems, the creators made assumptions about both the networks and human behavior. This is where the trouble began. Creators had a set of assumptions about how their systems would be used. Needless to say, not all users agreed with, or even understood, the philosophies of the creators. As a result, users repurposed the tools available to support their own needs and desires. Thus, what the users did did not match up to the social theory expected by creators. In some cases, these new uses horrified the creators who actively attempted to construct boundaries of acceptable behavior, further aggravating the users., and Cory Doctorow: The fact of the matter is that no group of engineers in a boardroom can ever anticipate what normal people will do with their inventions.