This one’s a somewhat lighter post, mainly a few observations about how, of all things, New York City weather, social networking and mobile technology all seem to gel quite effectively these days.

Last week, just back from the ITP Spring Show at Manhattan’s Tisch School of The Arts, I took a quick break strolling across Union Square, on my way to Yaron Samid’s latest NY Video 2.0 meetup event.

At Union Square, with weather conditions finally sunny enough for folks to be out en masse (53 degrees and sunny to be exact), I noticed the large number of individuals joyfully congregating with their cell phones, iPhones, or other smartphones in their hands.

Back in 1993, my first summer in New York, that was simply not the case. If you wanted to be on the phone, you were relegated to inside wired space or a relatively uncomfortable phone booth.

In fact you had to choose between, let’s say, party line chats (the chique social networking of its time), and physical eye-to-eye conversations with people out on neighborhood streets. Back then, you were relegated to one or the other, while today, you can easily do both simultaneously and not miss a beat either way.

If so, then here’s my question: Weather permitting, does handheld device innovation make people actually stay out longer and be more social to each other than they used to be?

In other words, does today’s ubiquitous mobile connectivity foster new personal one-on-one connections, in the process converting the age-old village square phenomenon into a current-day digital street fest idea?

Exhibiting ITP students over at the Tisch school seemed to think along these lines. After all these digital urbanites are young enough to not even know it any different.

What’s more, they are intuitively intend on taking this new form of mobile living to the next level. Case in point: Their interactive exhibits more than ever focused on socially responsible urban awareness apps.

One widget designer aimed to foster micro-donation giving right from you smartphone. Another tracked, of all things, local vermin infestation across the tri-state area. Someone else demonstrated how local weather temperatures have scaled upward in the past 100 years. Yet another app-designer enabled anyone to paint over and annotate Google Map images, for mobile send-off to friends interested in that particular street or neighborhood.

Summa summarum: Mobile communication has grown from a mere replacement of fixed line voice services into an ingenious platform fostering individuals’ growing awareness of their surrounding and its protagonists.

Thoroughly enjoyable, my recent Union Square and ITP experience both point in that direction.

On that note, have a great mobile summer everyone.