Battle For The Bulge: The Oyster Card

Oyster was introduced to London after I left the city a few years back – it’s a system where you charge a card that can be waved close by an reader at a ticket barrier or by a bus driver. I took this photo because I thought it was a good representation of the ‘Battle For The Bulge’ trend – but it also questioned whether it was just the telephone that was driving the trend.

People use Oyster cards in the same way they use their ‘magn etic’ security passes at work: people put the card in their wallets and purses and bounce their wallet against the readers to get on the Tube of bus. Note, how they don’t take out their card.

So what you get is this direct connection between this mobile device – your wallet in this instance – and travel. So what this demonstrates is that the wallet is one of the parties that is fighting to be the ‘bulge in your pocket’. People have been walking around with a wallet for hundreds of years – but with a phone for only, maybe, ten. Maybe we should stop thinking about making a phone or an iPod that does all things – but a wallet that can play music and make calls…