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Home |Changes [Jul 19, 2007]
ScheduleOne of the issues that I would like to discuss is how different cultures react to the introduction of a new technology such as the cell phone. I will be looking, in particular, at narratives of technology in Japan and South-East Asia. Technophobia vs. technophilia: how does pop culture react to new gadget, gizmos, and media?
Other key issues are:
- How does mobile telephony change (or leave unchanged) our notion of presence/absence?
- How does mobile telephony change (or leave unchanged) our social lives and organizations?
- How does mobile telephony create, destroy, and reinforce various communications practices?
- What kinds of conceptual frames can we develop to understand both the mobile communication technology and the role of communication technology in everyday life?
Some interesting data
"According to a 2004 MIT survey, the cell phone topped the list of inventions people hated the most but can't live without, with 30 percent of the respondents putting themselves in that category. That beat out the alarm clock (25 percent) and the television (23 percent)."
"In a 2005 study by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, 83 percent of respondents said cell phones have made life easier, besting the Internet in second place at 76 percent. But another 60 percent said they find cell phones somewhat irritating when used in public. "
"A Sprint user survey released earlier this year found that 47 percent of Bay Area respondents said they were inseparable from their wireless phones. A study by Telephia, a mobile industry tracker, found that Americans used their phone an average of almost 13 hours a month -- with users ages 18 to 24 racking up close to 22 hours of cell phone talk time a month".
"In a 2005 international survey of more than 3,000 people by BBDO Worldwide, an advertising agency, 75 percent of Americans said they had the phone turned on and within reach during their waking hours."
"According to the BBDO survey, 15 percent of Americans have interrupted sex to answer a cell phone call. It also found that 59 percent of us wouldn't think of lending our cell phone to a friend for a day. Another 26 percent said that a cell phone was more important to go home to retrieve than a wallet."
"In an ABC News poll released last month, 87 of respondents said the bad behavior they observed the most was people making annoying cell phone calls. The study, however, found that annoying cell phone calls were actually the third-most- bothersome conduct for respondents after overall rude behavior and use of bad language. Survey data show we are still trying to figure out the socially acceptable limits for cell phone use. In a survey about to be released by Let's Talk, a mobile retail and research company, 38 percent of 2,119 people said it was fine to use the cell phone in the bathroom. That is down from 62 percent in 2003 and 39 percent in 2000, when the survey began".
(From "The world's a cell-phone stage. The device is upending social rules and creating a new culture" by Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer Monday, February 27, 2006) [link]
Notes on Personal, Portable, Pedestrian (from now on, P3)
The keyword here is “keitai”, = “something that you carry with you” (mental note: Keitwai rhymes with “kawai” = cute, the Hello Kitty aesthetics) = the cell phone/mobile phone
P3 offers all you possibly wanted to know (actually, much more) about mobile culture in Japan, aka otaku-land, the dreamworld of manga, and the Kingdom of Nintendo. Co-edited by University of Southern California research scientist Mizuko Ito, Keio University lecturer Daisuke Okabe and Misa Matsuda of Tokyo's Chuo University, P3 investigates keitai as a social/techno/cultural artifact.
The format is anthological, which is good (variety in content) and bad (repetitions and redundancies) choice. The first part traces the genesis and evolution of mobile media from their roots in the wireless telephones that made their debut on '50s-era merchant ships, through '90s pager culture to contemporary uber-phones that function as laser weapons, personal massagers and espresso coffee makers. In the second – and arguably, more exciting – section of P3, the authors examine the uses and abuses of keitai.
Key theme: the cell phone made its first appearance as a disruptive technology. It was framed as a social “problem” associated with youth culture. However, in the new millennium, it became an accepted, pervasive tool. More: it has become indispensable in Japanese culture. Today, home is where the phone is – since the phone is mobile, home is everywhere – (see also Chapter 11, “The Gendered Use of Keitai in Domestic Contexts” by Shingo Dobashi).
The trajectory of keitai is somehow linear: from perversion to pervasiveness, from disruption (p. 29) to assimilation. It is a “technology/medium that came to be embedded in society” (p. 20). This has not happened in the US yet, according to Ito:
“In the United States mobile phones are not universally heralded as an advance but have been questioned as a problematic technology that erodes personal space” (p. 6) Throughout the book, keitai is wedged against the personal computer, a medium that offers another form of social and informational connectivity. However, it clearly emerges that the phone is preferred by Japanese over the PC (see p. 150, more email sent with keitai rather than with the PC). Japanese stay in touch with friends, family, lovers and co-workers with a phone. Keitai itself did not originate new social dynamics, but enhanced, strengthened existing ones.
Interesting concepts
Ichiyo Habuchi examines the notion of telecocoon to describe an always-on state of wireless closeness, "a zone of intimacy in which people maintain relationships with others who they have already encountered.", “the production of social identities through small, insular social groups” (p. 10) Kenichi Fujimoto writes about cell phones as "territory machines" capable of redefining the notion of space - a subway train seat, a grocery store aisle, a street corner – and transforming it into "(one's) own room and personal paradise."
intimate stranger (p. 184) - Through contentious phone-dating websites and/or between text-message exchanges, mobile devices allow for new form of bonding between individuals who may never meet in real space, but who nonetheless share a vivid experience of disembodied proximity that follows them as they wander through the world. Unlike the virtual, synthetic worlds of World of Warcraft described by Castronova, keitai space is fluid and malleable. It intersects with everyday, mundane activities, integrating the virtual and physical spheres.
Nagara mobility (p. 80) = the Japanese equivalent of multitasking = doing something "while-doing-something-else". This is particularly diffuse among teenagers and students, techno-mediated flaneurs that wander around the urban species carrying worlds of data. Keitai culture is fluid, malleable, a fluctuation of states.
Ambient Virtual Co-Presence – uses of keitai messages
Keitai priorities: “For people who are heavy keitai email users, there is often a social expectation that these intimate should be available for communication unless they are sleeping or working” (p. 264)
Key point – why constant touch is not a synthetic world - Keitai email messages “define a social setting that is substantially different from direct interpersonal interaction characteristic of a voice call, text chat, or face-to-face one on one interaction. These messages are predicated on the sense of ambient accessibility, a shared virtual space that is generally available between a few friends or with a loved one (…) From a technological perspective, this is not a persistent social space that exists independent of specific people’s logging in (…). As a technosocial system, however, people experience a sense of persistent space constituted through the periodic exchange of text message. These messages also define a space of peripheral background awareness that is midway between direct interaction and noninteraction” (p. 264)
The virtual communication enabled by cell phone has an ontological priority on the so-called “flesh meet(ings)” (p. 266) – also: “What nonusers don’t often realize is that keitai can augment the experience and properties of physically co-located encounters rather than simply detracting from them” (p. 266) – people “converge in virtual space prior to converging in physical space as they begin to microcoordinate” (p. 268)
What is keitai presence? “Keitai email constructs a space of connectivity that relies on pulsating movement between background and foreground awareness and interaction as people shift from lightweight messaging to chat to ‘flesh meet’” (p. 271)
My favorite bit
from Chapter 10 – Keitai in Public Transportation (Okabe-Ito)
“Despite an often oppressive crush of humanity, trains and subways in Japan are remarkably quiet. Although many passengers type into keitai keypads or scroll though pages on tiny screens, nobody talks on keitai. Even the sounds leaking from a young persons’ Walkman are considered a violation of this norm of silence. Pervasive announcements and signage prod commuters toward behavior that minimizes their audible presence in this shared space, but the subtle interactions between passengers are the most effective mechanisms for maintaining this social order. Suppose that a ring tone breaks this silence, or somebody sitting in the subway car starts a keitai conversation. Most likely, people nearby will glance quickly at the source of the noise. If the offender speaks particularly loudly, she may get a glare or an expression of disapproval (even if there are people chatting more loudly in the next seat). This kind of scene is a familiar one in everyday life in urban Japan” (p. 205)
Now, compare-and-contrast.
The cell phone is a network of meanings: it is a technological device, a means of communications, a political and ideological instrument, and ultimately, a tool that allows us to redefine our very presence in the world, our roles, responsabilities, and capabilities.
In the next two weeks I will review some of the most interesting books available on cell phone culture, in preparation to our discussion. After Feb 15, I will begin to suggest possible ways of approaching “Personal, Portable, Pedestrian”.
Cell Phone Culture: Essential Bibliography
Constant touch: a global history of the mobile phone by Jon Agar, Totem Books, London, 2004
Perpetual contact: mobile communication, private talk, public performance, by James E. Katz, Mark Aakhus, Cambridge University Press, 2002
Heidegger, Habermas and the mobile phone by George Myerson, Totem Book, 2001
The mobile connection: the cell phone's impact on society by Rich Ling, Morgan Kaufmann, 2003
Japanese cybercultures, by Mark McLelland, Nanette Gottlieb, Routledge, 2003
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, by Howard Rheingold, Basic Books, 2002
ROAM: A Reader in the Aesthetics of Mobility, by Anthony Hoete Black Dog, 2004
Let's start with Constant Touch: a global history of the cell phone by Jon Agar
Agar argues that cellular phones are the new pocket watches: “pocket watches provide the closest historical parallel to the rise of the cellular phone in our times” (p. 5) - in fact they both started as status symbols but then became disposable devices in a matter of years.
The genesis and evolution of the cellular phone is described as a technological, political and social race amongst the most advanced countries. He notes that while the US created the technology that makes cell phone communication possibile, it was Europe (actually, Scandinavia) that made the most of it, leapfrogging other regions of the world. The US' commercial and geographical fragmentation did not help, either.
The US spent four years awarding its cellular licenses for major markets alone, and seven years in total, which, when combined with the initial delay in authorizing any cellular service at all, gave other countries the chance to catch up on, and overtake, the technical lead originally provided to the US by AT&T (Gary A. Garrard, quoted in Agar, p. 41)
In addition to infrastructural problems, there were other factors (both economic and cultural) that slowed down considerably the adoption of cell phone technology in the US:
“Unlike in Europe or Japan, the owner of a mobile phone was charged for accepting an incoming call. This made owners reluctant to give away their mobile phone numbers to all and sundry, and had the effect of making the mobile phone a device for business or emergencies rather than for chat” (p. 42)
In the US, the cell phone was competing with pagers and beepers (these devices were almost non existent in Europe, for instance - here's the perfect example of a limited but widespread technology that compromises the adoption of a newer and better one, think about the Minitel in France).
Agar explains that mobile culture as we know it today was an invention of Northern Europe, namely Sweden and Finland. In fact, “Only when the cellular idea had been realized in the north (of Europe) did the system spread, for further political reason, across Europe” (p. 44-45).
Why Sweden? Agar lists political, sociological and economical reasons. In particular, he mentions Sweden’s “social democracy, internationalism” and “an enthusiasm for technology” that could not be found in other European countries, such as Italy of France, for instance.
In 1967, the chief engineer at Swedish Telecom Radio, Carl-Gosta Asdal, “suggested an automated nation wide mobile telephone and paging network should be built”. This project was green lighted and in 1969 the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) Group was established. And it comprised engineers from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland
The NMT project was successful, Agar writes, because all the participants “shared the same values of Nordic government – in particular, a faith in the development by consensus and rational discussion between experts. (these common values would not have been found if, say, the gathering had been between English, French, German and Spanish electrical engineers)” (p. 48).
The modern cell phone was born in 1982, and the parameters set by NMT became a de facto standard in Europe. GSM = global system for mobile communication was set in 1987 and launched in 1991.
Again, Agar stresses that innovation “had not come from the big European powers. It had come from the Nordic countries” (p. 58). What is so special about GSM?
1) GSM “offered an exceptional moment for reducing difference” among different countries’ standards/regulations. It established “a truly pan-European mobile communications” From the technological to the political: “’Europe’, an otherwise rather ghostly entity, was given substance by building material technological systems” (p. 60). GSM = an instrument in European unification
2) GSM also “provided a lead in the cut-throat global marketplace” that would allow Europe to “mount a convincing economic challenge to the US and Japan. From the political to the cultural: “A pan-European telecoms network would encourage organizations to think European” (p. 61)
3) Made roaming easing and inexpensive, unlike the US.
GSM officially began in 1991, but the first commercial services were available only in 1992, when eight countries started using it: Germany, Denmark, Finland, France, the UK, Sweden, Portugal and Italy. By 1995, the European coverage was complete. In 1996, it started to be adopted outside Europe. In 1996, GSM phones could be found in 103 different countries, from Australia to Russia, from South Africa to the US.
Why did GSM become a standard?
a) The “European digital standard benefited, bizarrely, from the (technological) chaos that went before (…) NMT provided a basic template” that worked well. “In the USA, where customers were satisfied with the analogue standard, there was little demand for digital until the spectrum space became to run out. Paradoxically, the USA lost the lead because its first generation of cellular phones was too successful” (p. 64-65).
b) GSM satisfied both European customers and manufacturers, on a technical and aesthetic level: “In the early 1990s, technical trends, especially miniaturization, led to a qualitative change in mobile terminal design. Suddenly mobile phones became small and light enough to routinely carry around” (p.65)
Adoption rate: initially slow. “By 1987, five years after the launch of the Nordic mobile cellular phones, roughly 2% of the population were subscribers. Cell phones had become a standard for truckers, construction workers, and maintenance engineers” (p. 52)
“GSM was imagined as a key infrastructural component of a future European market” (p. 138)
Tidbits
Cell Phone and freedom
“Possession of technology made social statements, and, conversely, ‘’not’’ to have a phone meant social deprivation (…) Loss of a technology of mobility was equated directly to loss of freedom” (p. 134, On Cell Phone Theft)
Cell Phone and surveillance/control
“Just as the mobility of the car was domesticated by keeping databases of information, the criminal potentialities of the cell phone have been contained by technologies of registration” (p 136).
“The GSM standard provided the option of identifying equipment through an Equipment Identification Number (EIN). This meant the SIM (card) would say who was on the phone and the EIN would say exactly which phone was being used” (p. 138).
“Information held by mobile phone operators and even the personal data stored on SIM card have become detective tools and forensic evidence” (p. 138)
“The diminishing guardianship of family life is replaced by the constant touch of the mobile phone” (p. 139)
Cell Phone and Power
“There has been a correlation, a sympathetic alignment, between the mobile phone and the horizontal social networks that have grown in the last few decades in comparison with older, more hierarchical, bureaucratic organization” (p. 162)
“However, technologies of mobility do not inevitably oppose centralized power (…) Technological systems of mobility helped create the Roman world, and mobility reinforced central hierarchical imperial power” (p. 162)
Cell Phone and Presence
"How can somebody be both present and not present? Mobile phones give us a powerful sense of co-presence that can be shockingly undermined (...) Constant touch is illusory". (p. 147)
Cell Phone and Horror
"Horror stems from interrupted mobility - whether it be from confinement to a grave or, traumatically outside fiction, from mobile phones in the twisted wreckage of train crashes or the last conversations on the hijacked airliners of 11 September 2001" (p. 149)
Mobile Landscapes - Urban Cartography "The technology for determining the geographic location of cellphones and other hand-held devices is becoming increasingly available. It is opening the way to a wide range of applications, collectively referred to as Location Based Services (LBS), which are primarily aimed at individual users. However, if deployed to retrieve aggregated data in cities, LBS could become a powerful tool for urban cartography." Link: http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=277
Here are some interesting passages (The following statements are made by different characters, but, in a sense, they all reflect King's attitude towards cell phones):
Cell phones as dangerous, demonic beasts: ”A little farther on, he noticed something else. There were cell phones lying discarded in the roadway. Every few feet they passed another one, and none were whole. They had either been run over or stomped down to nothing but wire and splinters and plastic, like dangerous snakes that had been destroyed before they could bite again” (p. 61)
Cell phones as instrumental to a terrorist attack – the Troy Horse argument: “At about three o’clock this afternoon, a terrorist organization, maybe even a tinpot government, generated some sort of a signal or pulse. For now we have to assume this signal was carried by every cell phone operating in the world.” (p. 84)
“In a way, this is no different from the bioterrorism the government was so afraid after nine-eleven,” he said. “By using cell phones, which have become the dominant form of communication is our daily lives, you simultaneously turn the populace into your own conscript army – an army that is literally afraid of nothing, because it’s insane – and you break down the infrastructure” (p. 84).
Cell phones as an instrument of the Devil “The devil’s intercoms is what I used to call them,” said Charles Ardai, who had been chairman of Gaiten Academy’s English Department for twenty five years and acting Headmaster of the Academy entire at the time of the Pulse (…) I never really meant it, of course, it was a joke, a jape, a comic exaggeration, but in truth I never liked the things, especially in an academic environment. I might have moved to keep them out of the school, but naturally I would have been overruled” (p. 142)
Cell phones as a danger to health: “They emit radiation, are you aware of this? In minuscule amounts, it’s true, but still… a source of radiation that close to one’s head… one’s brain…” (p. 142).
In Chapter two, Ling examines the broader questions associated with the adoption and use of mobile phones. He discusses the conflicting notions of technological determinism (the idea that technology (in)forms society) vs. social determinism (the idea that society (in)forms technology), and then he describes two middle ground positions, the theory of affordances and the domestication approach. The domestication approach is the most interesting one. It was developed by Roger Silverstone and Leslie Haddon in the UK. You can find a nice summary here: http://www.telenor.no/fou/program/nomadiske/articles/rich/(2001)Report.pdf
Here’s the gist (pp. 28-33, a mere synthesis)
The domestication approach describes several steps in the adoption cycle of a new technology. These include: imagination, appropriation, objectification, incorporation and conversion. “These stations describe the moment from having the idea that an object or service would be a useful addition to our life to the purchase of the object and its embedding in our life. Finally the process describes how an element becomes externalized as part of our social profile” (p. 28)
Imagination is the way in which a device, such as a mobile phone, enters our consciousness.
Appropriation describes the portion of the consumption process in which a particular object leaves the commercial world and enters our sphere of objects.
Objectification describes how a particular object or service comes to play out our values and sense of aesthetic. This stage in the domestication process describes how we think through the way in which an object will fit into our world. At issue is what placement, use, accessibility, time, consumption etc. say about us.
Incorporation focuses more on the functional. While objectification is the way in which an artifact comes to crystallize a sense of self, incorporation describes the function of these artifacts as assimilated by the users. It is also concerned with the temporal assimilation of the objects into time structures and routines.
Finally, it is in the Conversion phase that others incorporate their understanding of the artifacts in the broader understanding of the person consuming the artifact. It is at this point the person who purchased and using the item hopes to realize its social effect.
In Chapter three, Ling examines how mobile phone increase our safety and security – he also examines the discourse about cellular phone technology. In fact, safety and security “is a common theme in the purchase and ownership of a mobile phone” (p. 18). However, while the mobile phone might increase security – since it allow us to summon help in certain situation – it also creates new causes for danger, e.g. talking on a phone while driving a car. It can be also used for various criminal activities. Ling concludes that “for some people, to play on Goffman’s phrase, the device becomes a part of our “processional territory”. That is, the mobile phone is an object that can be identified with the self, and that, in turn, helps others to identify and perhaps characterize the individual.” (p. 55) (Unlike videogame, I’d say), “the general recognition of the mobile telephone as an aid in protecting our safety points to the broader legitimization of the device and its integration into the social order” (ibidem).
He notes, in Chapter 4 that the mobile phone allowed us to redefine the notion of social coordination. In fact, Ling writes that “the ability to coordinate activities “on the fly” is, perhaps, one of the most central advantages of the mobile phone”. He discusses the concept of micro-coordination, concluding that “the mobile phone will lead to changes in the organization of urban life” (p. 18). Ling describes how the device allowed us to greatly improve our coordination abilities – he mentions effects like “midcourse adjustment” (p. 70), “iterative coordination” (p. 72) and “softening of schedules” (p. 73). Ling concludes that “at both functional and moral level, the ability to coordinate and microcoordinate via the mobile telephone relies on the same sense of social interaction as timekeeping, particularly when discussing small-group interactions” (p. 82).
In Chapter 5, he examines how cellular phones are instrumental in the construction of identity and self-realization among teens. In fact, he notices that the mobile phone allows for a creation of a “tightly bound together social network” (p. 18). This network is “dynamic in its organization and location” (p. 18). Ling goes as far as arguing that “the mobile phone has redefined the institution of adolescence as well as the emancipation process” (ibidem). He writes about the symbolic meaning of the cellular phone amongst teenagers and concludes that “it seems that teens’ use of mobile telephony is not a settled issue (…) The place of the mobile telephone is still being actively discussed and argued over. The moral and ideological furniture is not in place” (p. 121)
In Chapter 6 (my favorite one), Ling discusses the extent to which the mobile phone is a disturbance in the public sphere. The author describes the phenomenon in a succinct, but effective way: “Upon the ringing of a mobile phone, you must, in one way or another, excuse yourself from the face-to-face world and give yourself over a telephonic sociability. This leaves the “precall” social situation “on hold” while you complete the call, which itself can require greater or lesser levels of privacy. Upon completion of the call, you must reintegrate yourself into the preexisting face-to-face social interaction and perhaps repair the damage cause by the interjection of the call”. The paradox of being absent in the presence of others.
Ling writes that “mobile telephony has the ability to disrupt the structure of social interaction at several levels. At the broadest level, the device challenges the decorum of established social settings , such as those in restaurants. At a more microsocial level, there is a range of disturbing elements in the way that we manage interpersonal interaction vis-à-vis the mobile telephone. Finally, for the individual actor in a social situation there is turbulence caused by issues such as force eavesdropping” (pp. 142-143/.
Ling also examines the role of texting (Chapter 7). It works phenomenally (especially in Europe and Asia) because it is asynchronous, relatively unobtrusive, cheaper than voice telephony.
In Chapter 8, Ling discusses the broader effects of mobile communication, trying to answer technophobic/technophilic questions such as ‘Will the mobile telephone contribute to or weaker the social capital?’. He shows how there is basically good evidence for both arguments. In fact, on one hand “the mobile phone can lead to a “balkanization”, in that we can escape our immediate situation and interact with only like-minded persons (…) In the process we do not just drop out, but we also colonize a part of the public sphere and reduce it slightly by our unwillingness to participate” (p. 19). At the same time, the phone allows for the “development of stronger in-group ties. It leads to the sharing of experiences and emotions more immediately than any mediated form of contact, save face-to-face interaction” (p. 19).
This is a brilliant collection of essays. There are way too many good contributions to be discussed here. I encourage everybody who wants to know more about cell phone culture to check out in particular Part III, titled "Public performance: social groups and structures".
What follow are my notes on "The challenge of absent presence", a brilliant essay by Kenneth J. Gergen (pp. 223-242), which is extremely pertinent to our ongoing discussion of the politics of presence. It also provides interesting counter-arguments to those previously discussed in the cases of Liveness and Synthetic Worlds
Here we go.
The Challenge of absent presence by Kenneth J. Gergen
Gergen discusses the phenomenon of absent presence, i.e. the ability of being “present but simultaneously rendered absent”, the feeling of being “erased by an absent presence” (p. 227). He argues that in the 20th century, this phenomenon has been expanding at a steady rate. The domain of “diverted” or “divided consciousness invited by communication technology (…) in particularly the mobile telephony” has significantly altered the way we interact with other human beings.
Absent presence: “one is physically present, but (…) absorbed by a technologically mediated world of elsewhere. Typically, it is a world of relationships, both active and vicarious, within which domains of meaning are being created or sustained. Increasingly, these domains of alterior meaning insinuate themselves into the world of full presence – the world in which one is otherwise absorbed and constituted by the immediacy of concrete, face-to-face relationships” (p. 227)
Gergen identifies the origin of absent presence in the genesis and development of print technology: “despite its significance, print technology must be seen as but a first force in the historical emergence of absent presence” (p. 229).
Moreover, the book is a paradigmatic example of what Gergen calls ‘’monological technology” – the do not allow for a true dialogue, rather, they simulate it – “they speak but are not directly spoken to (…) They insert alterior voices into daily life circumstances but there is little means (…) by which one can respond” (p. 229).
Thus, books, radio, phonographs, cassette and compact disc recording, television etc. are really monologues. These technologies are populist (in the sense that their penetration is massive) and sustained by “major industrial investments” (p.229). Also, the “the messages of radio, television, and film are impersonal” and they remain “one step removed from the life of the audience” (p. 229).
A second implication of monologic technology is their “progressive privatization” – at first they facilitated “collective reception”, but “as the cost of monologic communication technologies has declined and miniaturization has progressed, so have they been progressively removed from collective deliberation”. Monologic technologies’ potential lies in “immersing people in private worlds”.
The antithesis of monologic technology is dialogic communication technologies, such as “the telephone, video and computer games, and, most prominently, the internet” (p. 230) These technologies “facilitate the flow of interactive movement in meaning (…) In the case of video and computer games, although dialogic, they are also relatively barren in terms of content relevant to the world outside themselves” (p. 230).
Dialogic communication technologies allow the user to “participating in the construction of the world, and this construction can be uniquely tailored to, and expressive of, one’s individual circumstances” (p. 231).
Then Gergen identifies four major cultural reverberations/consequences of absent presence.
1) Dangerous liaisons “The emerging domain of the absent present renders daily life a landscape of dangerous liaisons. As radio, television, magazines, books and film consume our fantasies, ignite our desire and offer new ideas and directions, so the realities embedded in what we often call our ‘primary bonds’ are placed under potential threats” (p. 231). In other words, Gergen says that the instantaneous access to massive amounts of information might devalue what is close to us. “Individual communiqués can become lost in a sea of contending comntenders” (p 232). Information overload plus attention deficit disorder = the contemporary age. “As the domain of the absent present is enlarged so the importance of face-to-face relations is likely to be diminished” (p. 232)
2) Horizontal relationships Gergen distinguishes between vertical and horizontal relationships (these ideals “tend toward antagonism”): “relating in vertical register typically requires dedicated attention, effort, commitment and sacrifice (…) The expansion of absent presence as essentially favoring a cultural shift from the vertical to the horizontal register of relationship. To become enamored of the works of a given author, film director, composer, dancer of jazz musician, for example, is essentially to broaden the network of relationships in which one is engaged” Ex. Televised sport as surrogate companions for men. Gergen is pretty apocalyptic: “Americans will soon live in a country in which the majority of people live alone. But, it should be added, these people are not likely to be living without television, radio, CDs, a video-cassette recorder or a computer” (p. 233)
3) Humans without qualities “As the domain of absent presence expands, so the scaffolding for a recognizable self is eroded. With each new enclave of meaning, whether vicariously or interactively constituted, there are new selves in the making (…) With video and computer games these yearnings may gain in clarity and potency. Such games indeed seemed to have fueled the actions of the Columbine High assassins.” (p. 234) According to Gergen, “we are moving into a cultural condition in which our identities are increasingly situated, conditional and optional” (p 234).
4) The new floating world Today, we live in a floating world of meanings, facilitated by the domain of the absent presence. “To read a novel, see a film or watch televised sports is to engage in a world of representation – What Debord might call the “world of the spectacle” and Baudrillard would term the “hyperreal”.” What are the consequences? “As our attentions are poured into floating realms, so the skills, the repertoires and the creative development required for effective exchange in daily relations diminish” (p. 235). “At worst, to live in floating worlds of absent presence may mean the devaluation of mere day-to-day activity” (p. 235).
Retrenchments and reconfiguration: the cellular phone
Gergen concludes that the repercussions of absent presence are: the erosion of face-to-face community, a coherent and centered sense of self, moral bearings, depth of relationship, and the uprooting of meaning from material context.
How does the cell phone increase the domain of absent presence?
Gergen talks about the “drama” of the cell phone, since it “serves as an instrument par excellence for endogenous strengthening. The realities and moralities of the face-to-face relationships are revitalized. This is not only because of the perpetual connection that a mobile phone allows. But the very fact that the user is rendered vulnerable to calls at any time of the day or night invites careful selection of those who will be granted access to one’s number” (p 237).
Also, “the efficacy of the cell phone is extending the power of endogenous realities is partially reflected in the resentment many feel toward those using them in their presence” (p. 238)
In fact, “cell phone conversation typically establishes an “inside space” (“we who are conversing”) vs. an “outside space” constituted by those within earshot but prevented from participating. The fact that “it does not matter whether you listen or not” underscores the impotent insignificance of the outsider” (p 238).
The “my phone is like a prison” argument: backlash “against the continuous intrusion of obligations, standards and expectations of one’s circle of intimates” p. 238).
“The cell phone lends into a retrenchment of verticality. Given the privilege granted by the cell phone to a select few, there is less tendency to move laterally and superficially across relationships (…) With the cell phone, one’s community of intimates more effectively sustains one’s identity as a singular and coherent being. One is continuously, if sometimes painfully, reminded of one’s place in the flux of social life” (p. 238)
With respect to the floating worlds encouraged by other technologies, “at the one hand the cell phone does invite an expansion of the symbolic world that may be little related to the immediate practical surroundings of either speaker (…) At the same time, the cell phone facilitates new integrations of the absent and the present in subtle ways” In fact, “because of its flexible insinuation into wide-ranging social contexts, and the semi-public character of the communication, the cell phone is virtually unique in its capacity to link otherwise absent worlds to the immediate circumstance” (p. 239).
Conclusions
1) On the one hand, we can anticipate significant resistance to the proliferation of the cell phone of present construction (…) Cell phone technology not only favors a kind of parochialism, but also stands as a wedge against the kind of polyvocal participation required in an increasingly multicultural world” (p. 240)
2) On the other, the predictable “transformations in the cellular phone (…) will undermine its present functioning (…) There is much to be gained from a small mobile instrument with the capabilities to extend outward into the social and material world”. The cell phone will become a small computer: “with this inevitable tendency toward expanding the functions of the instrument, absent presence of the exogenous variety will only be intensified” (p. 240).
Another interesting essay is James B. Rule’s “From mass society to perpetual contact: models of communication technologies in social context” (pp. 242-254). Rule identifies three (interesting) models that describe how mobile telephony might affect society:
1. Appendectomy vs. drug addiction
Question: “Does the demand for mobile phones (…) more closely resemble the “need” for an appendectomy of that for a drug ‘fix’”? (p. 251)
Appendectomy = Technology is seen as a response to specific needs – this is the classical “Enlightenment-inspired” explanation of technological change, that is, technological innovation is a “solution to pre-existing needs”. Thus, “the history of technological innovation is essentially a history of progress, as a greater and greater array of needs is incrementally fulfilled by innovative human response to felt necessity” (p. 250). Appendectomy = “a solution for a problem whose existence is hard to deny, even for those who do not understand how it comes about” (p. 251)
Drug addiction = technological innovation “is no a response to “problems” that are objectively given, but in fact is created by the same processes that generate the problems in the first place” (p. 250) Drug addiction = technology is seen as a “fix of an addictive drug (…) Desperate though the addict may be for a fix, the underlying craving the drug satisfies would never arise unless first incited by taking the drug”.
2. Embryo vs. a random walk
Question: “How much is it reasonable to assume in advance about who will use the technology, how widely, for what purposes and with what repercussions for other social arrangements?”
Embryo = each technology has a “trajectory”, thus it carries “a notion of a fixed and foreseeable future (…), a complex succession of quantitatively distinct states, like those in the development of embryos, (which) can theoretically be understood and anticipated” (p. 251-252)
Random Walk = the notion that “the steps in the development of this technology are loosely coupled, perhaps totally indeterminate, like the course of a whimsical stroller heading in no particular direction” (p. 252)
3. Niche-dweller vs. weed
Weeds = “a sizable category of natural species whose environmental adaptations are so broad as to permit them to inhabit and thrive and different environments” (p. 252) “Mobile telephony could prove to be a “weedy” technology in its own right, by destroying the distinctive qualities of milieux constrained by the physical presence of participants” (p. 253)
Niche-dweller = “Norms could grow up that would confine reliance on perpetual contact to circumscribed times and settings. Should this occur, mobile telephone use might come occupy its special niche in social ecology, something this one does on very specific occasions, rather than crop up everywhere, invited or not, like an invasive plant” (pp. 253-254)
Finally, here some notes on Leopoldina Fortunati’s essay “Italy: stereotypes, true and false” (pp. 42-62), which analyzes the use of mobile phone in one of the most developed markets in the world for this kind of technology.
“Our first, somehow counterintuitive, finding is that the mobile phone does not seem a very communicative instrument. Despite its appearance as a modern form of the telephone and despite the fact many people think it will replace the fixed phone, our research highlights the way it frustrates users’ attempts to communicate (…) Movement itself brings it with a certain difficult that ends up affecting the use of the mobile” (p. 43)
“If by mobile instrument we mean an intrsument that accompanies human movement (as opposed to “moving”, see Virilio), then the mobile phone is not very mobile. In Western Europe, only about one fifth of users say they use it in the street (these users are disproportionately Italian), while another fifth use it in enclosed spaces” (p. 44).
“If by mobile we mean (…) an instrument that can be used when the body itself is still, through being conveyed through space, such as occurs when one in is a railway carriage, then the proportion of respondents who use it in a means of transportation involves 42% of cases.” (p 44)
Phenomenology of mobile telephony
“To what extent is the mobile telephone a truly portable technology? If we look at the phenomenology of its use, its position on the surface of the body is both precarious and uncomfortable” (p. 46)
Male = “Nowhere in male clothing doe it have a stable place so the mobile is destined to be accommodated as other objects that have historically had analogous functions, such as a gun slung on the belt” (p. 47)
Female = “In women’s clothing, the mobile is more stable, in that it is generally placed in a handbag and is also kept further away from the body” (p. 47)
And yet, Fortunati argues that
“Of all mobile technologies, the mobile phone is the one most intimately close to the body. If the Walkman “dresses” the ear, and microchips remain inserted in the body for long periods, the mobile involves not only the ear but also the mouth and voice. To involve the voice involves a most intimate part of our body, because the voice emerges from within the body’s intimate core, and is connected directly to one’s sexuality” (p. 48)
“The mobile seems to be contributing to dissolving the traditional separation of intimacy and extraneousness and of public and private” (p. 48)
“The mobile phone is the communicative instrument that helps these opposing concepts come closer together by unifying them, and it favors the [progressive encroachment of intimacy in the public sphere and of extraneousness in the private sphere” (p. 48)
'''Stereotypes and half truths about Italians and their phones'''
“Among Europeans, Italians most frequently say that they have problems in talking freely in front of a large group of people. They are also more irritated, together with the British, by other people’s conversations on mobiles” (p. 53)
“Hence, the stereotypical explanation give to the success of the of mobile phone in Italy (=Italians are most communicative than other Europeans) does not appear valid. Neither can the success of the mobile in Italy be readily attributable to the Italians’ enchantment with technology, because, on the contrary, the Italians often appear as technophobic (…) Italians are among the least enthusiastic about technological progress. Another admission from Italians fills out this picture: they have difficulties using new technologies. The Italians are the only European who admit to having this difficulty” (p. 53)
“This would suggest, if anything, (that) the mobile has been a great success in Italy because it was introduced not as a sophisticated technological instrument, but more as a friendly, easy-to-use gadget, a unique totem” (p. 53)
“Another important reason for the mobile’s success in Italy is that it has become “fashionable” by being incorporated into the aesthetics management of the body perceived visual fields (…) Italians, who give special importance to dressing well, spend more on clothes than on leisure” (p. 54)
“Italians showed greater caution in regulating the possibility of being contacted daily on the mobile. Italy notably is also the country where the mobile is most often left on in all settings: at home, in shops, in theaters, on public transport, at the home of friends, and in the car. This indicates a greater flexibility in the use of the mobile, as if the Italians, for example more than the British, have learnt top modify its use according to changing circumstances” (p 54)
“The second hypothesis that we put forward is that the great success of the mobile in Italy is due, in great part, to its being a technology of re-productive work. It responds exactly to the sort of social living that the Italians love, neither intimate not tied to the home, but rather live outside, in the street. It is a particular feature of Italian sociality that one must neither be not appear programmed. Regimented living and precise organizationally planned activities are abhorrent (…) This inherent sense of spontaneity and flexibility, which can also appear to outsiders as disorganization and incoherence, leads the mobile to be seen as the ideal instrument for rapidly adjusting the organizational fabric of daily living” (pp. 55-56)
Creating more "polite" phones is top priority ar Motorola and Carnegie Mellon
Read more: [link]
It’s a pamphlet, a short, vehement tirade against the cellular phone, masqueraded as a philosophical investigation. Myerson’s goal is to examine the notion of mobile communication, better, to analyze the discourse of mobile communication, rather than its phenomenology. Unlike other commentators that criticize the intrusiveness nature of the phone, Myerson condemns the form of communication that it constructs and structures. Mobile communication is fragmented, accelerated, highly commoditized, and ultimately meaningless.
Myerson discusses the meanings associated with the cell phone in popular discourse (mostly in advertising, public relations, news media) emphasizing the concept of mobilization, a cultural process used for fostering the adoption of a new technology.
What is being mobilized? a) the old phone, b) communication itself, c) people.
Myerson tries to explain what “mobilizing of communication” means. In order to do so, he discusses the notion of “communication”
“Communication is a concept. There are different versions of this concept, and the mobile campaign is based on the idea that it is possible to change the whole meaning of communication itself” (p.19)
However, this reinvention is not exactly positive, according to Myerson. In fact, unlike ‘real’ communication, mobile communication operates on a simple, egotistical reason: “The Principle of Want” (p. 25):
“People communicate with the cell phone in order to satisfy their wants. The mobile is the key to satisfying your wants generally. It gets you things” (p. 25)
“You communicate to ‘say what you want’. This does not mean what you mean to say – it means what you have to have” (pp. 25-26)
“In mobile communication, the ideal (communication) is represented by the swiftest possible route to the most direct response” (p. 43)
“(mobile communication) is a virtual reality model of interactivity” (p. 44)
“In mobile communication there are no reasons (…) On the contrary: you want what you want, and the voice will comply if you can pay, Ok, as an aspect of consumption. But as a model of communicationm? (p. 48)
Because of mobilization, “Communication is being increasingly measured in terms of money, becoming ‘metered’ (…) Metering is going to be a very direct part of everyday contact all the time, at work and beyond” (p. 60)
For a philosopher such as Jurgen Habermas [link], who coined the notion of “Communicative Action”, we do not communicate to “satisfy your desire, but crucially in order to ‘make known a desire or intention’. You don’t aim to satisfy the want by talking; you aim to disclose it … To communicate means to make your desires understood, not to pursue their immediate fulfillment”. (p. 27)
For Habermas, ‘good communication’ is ‘rational communication’ = “when it has an element of debate, or potential for debate, inside it (…) For Habermas, the most disturbing feature of the mobile ideal is that it leaves no space for criticism at all and so no scope for achieving true agreement” (pp. 47-48)
Myerson fears that “mobile communication” erases the notion of “dialogue”, replacing the two way conversation with what he calls “exchange”. We do not communicate, argues Myerson. Rather, we “exchange messages” through “devices”. The outcome is rather apocalyptic:
“On the one hand, you have the supremely individualistic view, … atomistic. There is no real gathering at all. Instead, there are only isolated individuals, each locked in his or her own world, making contact sporadically and for purely functional purposes. On the other hand, there is a system, of messages, and at that level there are no human agents at all, because they are overwhelmed by the sheer exuberance of the messages as they multiply and reproduce with a life o their own” (p. 38)
What are the consequences?
“For Habermas, a society that arranged its affairs by exchanging 20 or 30 messages an hour (in the background) would soon forget what is involved in a meaningful expression – how much can be said, how much should be said. Such a society would be ‘pathological’” (p. 42)
What is the different between mobile communication and ‘rational communication’?
“Mobilization seeks to improve ordinary communication by giving it new channels, clarifying the real meaning of the message, speeding up the response time, whereas the philosophers want communication to be more gradual, more weighed by the search for understanding” (p. 50).
Why the success of the mobile phone is dangerous?
“As society adopts this technology, it is inevitably going to diffuse the associated ideas, images and ways of thinking (…) The potential tragedy is that the most rich of technological developments is being packaged in such an impoverished vision. And this in turn matters because there are a number of other powerful developments with which it fits – in education, in a view of work and of democracy itself” (p. 53).
“The mobilizing of communication is the precursor, the necessary precondition, to a larger mobilization of everyday life (…) The new order of everyday life (is) faster, neater, sharper (…) If this is the future, there will be no idea of communication distinct from the idea of commerce” (p. 62-63)
What is the impact of mobile communication/mobilization on learning?
“To learn now means to have the right information pushed at you as efficiently as possible (…) In the mobile scenario, the more information you acquire, the more efficiently you are learning. (…) Habermas, however, is concerned with ‘how’ people gain knowledge and ‘how’ they use it (…) Specifically, a person who had gained knowledge through genuine dialogue might have a richer understanding than someone who had just got hold of the data as swiftly as possible” (p. 53-55)
Why is mobilization radically different than Heidegger’s [link] idea of communication? And why is this ‘bad’?
“For Heidegger, communication was part of a wider phenomenon he called ‘discourse’. Communication was discourse explaining itself (…) Discourse is about a kind of knowledge: ‘Discourse is the Articulation of Intelligibly”. Discourse is any way in which people give expression to their sense that the world is understandable, that a certain experience of the world can make sense” (p. 57).
“For Heidegger, communication is the process by which people share, and encourage, their sense that the world can be comprehended, that their experience can become significant (…) A society that does not communicate will not give its members the chance to feel their experience adds up to any coherent whole ” (p. 57-58).
Thus
“In Heidegger’s terms, the mobile model threatens to make a minor part of communication into the central case” (p. 58)
In Habermas’ terms, the mobile can lead to a world “which cannot distinguish between a credit card transaction and a conversation – or a world where the ideal conversation aspires to the condition of a credit card transaction” (p. 65).
Conclusions: questions and auspices
“The mobile would be the supreme medium for turning everything around into a system, driving out the process of reaching understanding, replacing meanings with messages, consensus with instructions and insight with information” (p. 65).
“The mobile technology is clearly not going to be switched off. It is going to develop in all kinds of new directions. But does that technology need to come packaged in the mobile concept of communication? Could we have the mobile without the mobilization? Might we, for instance, connect the new technologies of ‘information’ with the older models of ‘how speaking and acting subjects acquire knowledge’?” (p. 58)
Meanwhile, here is an interesting, albeit morbid, aside: "Japan's obsession with camera-equipped mobile phones has taken a bizarre twist, with mourners at funerals now using the devices to capture a final picture of the deceased. At one ceremony several people gathered round the coffin and took out their phones to photograph the corpse as preparations were made to begin a cremation, she was quoted as saying" (from Yahoo News) [link]
"Keitai Girl (2003), the artist dons a skin-tight body suit reminiscent of metallic fish scales that is carefully crafted from cell phone keypads. Her face painted in the traditional powdery white makeup of Butoh, Yamaguchi wears large headphones and is draped from head to toe with wires seemingly ripped from a telecommunications command center, setting her adrift and alone in the ether. The suit, thanks to its digital keypads, begs to be dialed, thus showing the vulnerable position of the artist within the grasp of any number of anonymous hands that might reach out and “touch someone.” In fact, certain guests are given the telephone number of her body suit and can dial her up from their own cell phones and engage Yamaguchi in conversation during her performances. Thanks to the widespread use of cell phones, or keitai, in Japan, Yamaguchi created this suit—a full-body prosthetic that turns her into a walking and talking cellular device—to investigate the future development of the human body and its interaction with technology."
Read more: [link]
Noriko Yamaguchi "Keitai Girl" (2003)
Here some highlights:
Cellphone and the Internet
“The cellphone is not only a net improvement in communication, it is an improvement over communication on the Net – in communication over the internet” (p.7-8) According to Levinson, mobile telephony is superior to e-mail, because it “cuts the room-leash completely” (p. 8).
Cellphone is a “remedial medium for one of the unintended consequences of the Internet – which replaced a lot of the stationery, but kept us stationary” (p. 9).
Technological determinism vs. social determinism
“People determine the evolution of the media-which ones survive, which ones fall by the wayside, which ones hang on by a thread, which ones thrive” (p. 11)
“The enormous success of the cellphone means it has survived a human test … The need that the cellphone satisfies is the need to talk and walk, to communicate and move, at the same time. It is a need that even defines the human species, as an organism that makes symbolically meaningful sounds with voice and tongues, and goes from place to place upright, on hind legs” (p. 13)
I love the fact that Levinson describes the portrayal of cellphone in pop culture, in particular in science fiction (pp. 29-33).
“A book, a Sony Walkman, a cellphone are as natural to encounter outdoor as a tree, an automobile, or a bridge” (p. 44)
Major advantages of cellphones
“The cellphone is (…) an excellent assistant on both sides of this transformational process – the little child before and the complete adult after – just not in the middle. The cellphone works well for parents who must keep in touch with children and children who must keep in touch with their parents, and it also works well for adult children who want, who elect, to b in touch with their parents” (p. 90)
“The cellphone is currently the epitome of mobility in media because it allows both reception (like the book and the transistor radio) and production (like the Kodad camera), allows this immediately and long distance (like the transistor radio), and allows this interactively (like no prior mobile medium)” (p. 52).
“We began as a species with communication as fingertip impulse, but only for communication very close at hand. We progressed to a life in which the impulse for communicate with people and about things far away could b gratified, but not completely, and only immediately if we were at home or in another suitable indoor place … The cellphone gives un instant gratification, just about anywhere” (p. 53).
“When the cellphone has completely permeated our society, when immediacy in media is the de facto order of the day, there will be no longer any contradiction between immediate and media, no whiff of oxymoron. At that point, media and immediate will be one and the same” (pp. 56-57)
The telephone (both stationary and mobile) led to the emergence of the “telepathic society” - Unlike in Steven Kings’ vision, “this kind of telephonic telepathy entails speaking of minds, not reading of minds … The telephatic society is thus ultimately not about invasion of privacy, and is quite different from David Brin’s (1998) “transparent society”, a world in which we have no secrets” (p. 58)
“The cellphone has transformed every pocket and handbag and therefore the whole worlds into a huge phone booth” (p. 58)
“A cellphone with Internet access in everybody’s pocket (will) strengthen the self in its voyage through the world (…) Place will be become far less relevant as a source of information than it is today, because we will be able to reach anyone, regardless of the places they and we might be (…) This will be not quite what Joshua Meyrowitz had in mind in his 1985 No Sense of Place. Instaed, rather than our sense of place disappearing, it will be everywhere” (pp. 60-61)
“The cellphone with its Internet connection will smarten the world” (p. 61)
“The cellphone, makes the world smart in a way that is radically different from smart cars and buildins. Like a magic wand that we carry, the cellphone makes any place in the world instantly smart, anyplace we may happen to wave our phone” (p.118)
The darker side of cellphones/inforeseen drawbacks: information overload and intrusiveness
“As we continue to move from scarcity to abundance of communication, the welcome breakthrough becomes an annoyance. Information underload becomes overload, which in turn becomes a different kind of underload, as we look doggedly for strategie, information, to help us navigigate, cope with, the new abundance” (p. 65)
“The gist of this explosion in accessibility is that, as we move more fully into the telepathic society, we will have to rely on individual decisions to say no – not to cellphone use entirely (for soon everyone who has a telephone will also have a cellphone or replace the landline phone with a cellphone), not even to the divulging of cellphone numbers (for soon these will be available as traditional telephone numbers) but to responding, acknowledging, or allowing receipt of a call at a given time” (p. 71).
Why are we irritated when somebody talks on the cellphone (we are irritated, aren’t we?). Levinson provides a number of possible answers:
a) Listening in on a one-sided conversation is “like watching a movie without sound on an airplane, because you’re sitting in economy class and don’t want to pay for the earphones” (p. 76)
b) “Jealousy of not receiving a call yourself” (p. 77): if nobody calls you, you do not exist.
c) “The tone of voice of the overhead speaker” (p. 77) This happens “maybe because the lack of wires creates an insecurity that the voice is in danger of getting lost in the blue” (p. 77)
d) The paradox of the cellphone ring, both personal and public: “The problem with the cellphone’s ring, the source of the discord, is that, unlike the church bell, it hails from a private place, the personal pocket, but is heard in public. In contrast, the church bell begins, continues, and concludes ringing all in the public sphere” (p. 79).
"A smart mob is a group that, contrary to the usual connotations of a mob, behaves intelligently or efficiently because of its exponentially increasing network links. This network enables people to connect to information and others, allowing a form of social coordination." (from Wikipedia)
Implications
- "Technological determinism" in full swing: here technology is regarded as a powerful tool that can make people ‘smarter’ because they allow for a new way of organizing, circulating and diffusing information. The empowerment comes from technologies such as the internet, IRC, PDAs and, of course mobile phones.
- It must be noted that there is a dark side: if technology is used negatively, smart mobs can become evil mobs (think, for instance, of terrorist uses of new media or pervasive surveillance from the State)
Example of Smart Mobs associated with mobile telephony: Text messages that were sent in the Philippines, which are thought to be partly responsible for the demonstration that ousted former President Joseph Estrada. [link]
On a slightly different topic, here's a piece of news that somehow connects keitai culture with surveillance culture: the cellphone as a tracking device. Where does your privacy end? If you're always present, willing or not, what happens to your notion of presence? [link]:
"There are several reasons why you may want to track someone. You may be a company wanting to keep tabs on employees during work hours, or a parent wanting to check up on a child's whereabouts. These sorts of tracking services, now available in the UK, get information from the network about which cell your phone is currently in, and, for a small fee, display the location on an online map. As well as checking where a certain phone is right now, you can run scheduled lookups, or snail trails, to record the phone's movements throughout the day, and produce a report for you to peruse at your leisure" (Spencer Kelly, BBC News)
"Edison used to bite the horn of the phonograph, as though in hapless revenge for the theft of the voice, in order to conduct the sound through his skull and compensate for his deafness. Hearing one's own voice takes place in large degree through bone conduction; it is generated in the throat and carried via the bones in the head to the inner ear, whereas the phonographed voice returns to its parent through air conduction, that is, without the bones. The phongraphed selfsame voice is deboned." (93)
Jumper: Your book's called "Personal, Portable, Pedestrian". While the first two "P"s are clear, the last one is curious: while "pedestrian" is so important? Technology tends to propose us the use of the mobile phone in every situation (in the car, while sitting at our desk, at the restaurant, also with the use of Bluetooth devices). If you used that word is must be really important... can you explain (to the people that haven't read your book yet) why the mobile phone user is essentially a... pedestrian?
Ito: The term "pedestrian" plans on both the meaning of "while walking" as well as the meaning of "ordinary and everyday." You are certainly right that the mobile phone gets used in many forms of transportation as well as in stationary locations, but part of what our research suggests is that there are aspects of Japanese mobile phone use that are somewhat distinctive and have been optimized for pedestrian contexts where people are moving between public transportation and walking. The dominance of text messaging over voice in Japan is keyed to this more pedestrian modality, in contrast to voice communication which is more appropriate for the car or other private settings like the office or home. Text messaging is an ideal form of communication for moving about crowded and noisy urban centers, in the interstices of engaging in other activities, and in trains, buses and restaurants where we don't feel that voice communication is appropriate. The second meaning of pedestrian is directed towards the sense that mobile phones have become part of the taken for granted background of everyday life in Japan and is no longer considered a new or disruptive technology.
Read more: [link]
