Yes, adolescents acquire their first mobile phone at an increasingly younger age. And so what? Yes, SMS has given rise to an entire texting culture. And so what? Yes, we are now all highly dependent on, if not addicted to, the mobile phone. And so what?
People communicate in multiple complex ways like they always have been doing. Young people flirt by means of passing love notes on SMS, just like older generations used to pass paper notes. People are using their mobile phones a lot, just like people are using the fixed line phones, the internet, the automobile, the computer, the refrigerator, the microwave, the television, the newspaper. So what's the big deal with the mobile phone?
This was more or less the feedback I got from Chrisanthi Avgerou during a break at the Mobile Interaction workshop at LSE. I guess she has a point. I am not sure exactly what that point is, or what the answer should be like. But I am not withdrawing my brain cells from this line of work!
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Musings on living the mobile phone
Tag Cloud
Links
- Exploring Mobile 2.0
- Nokia's Culture of Mobility
- The Feature
- Mobile Interaction & Pervasive Social Devices @ LSE
- MobiForum
- The Mobile Technology Weblog
- Russell Buckley and Carlo Longino on Mobile Technology
- SMS Poetry competition, pre-fabricated SMS, and more
- Mobile Clubbing: A flash mob that never happened
3 comments:
Is there a difference between a. passing a paper note to a loved one and b. asking a friend to pass a paper note to a loved one? Is there a difference between being a. a dummy and b. a co-star in the development of a plot?
If you tell me there is no difference in either of these cases, I'll believe there is a point in the 'So What?'.
Are you suggesting that sending an SMS love note is equivalent to asking a friend to pass a paper note? If this is so, there is probably some difference in how you flirt (and how you experience it and what happens next) but, then, is this such a big deal for 'scientific' analysis to be concerned with it?
And what's the analogy between the dummy and the co-star? I don't get it.
I say that if there is a technological artefact that has earned the 'status' of a non-human actor, that would be the mobile. Why not try to move the issue away from how human actors are affected by the mobile and study the mobile on its own merits - as a social actor. [Can you see now how the dummy/co-star analogy is connected?]
What's the big deal? I thought we were done with big deals ... just let the actors do the talking, go beyond emerging cultures and boring addictions and let the small deal reveal itself.
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