Digital everyday world (mobiles)

Digital everyday world (mobiles)

1. Facts and dates

   • First mobile call made in 1973
   • 108,000,000 mobiles sold in 1997
   • More mobile phones than people. Two SIMs per person in India and China.
   • Sony Walkman in 1979
   • Ipod 2001
     • Iphone 2007
   • 2006- 20% of people in US had an MP3 player

2. Social changes

   • Location increasingly irrelevant for communication- anyone can be contacted anywhere at any time.
   • Etiquette
     • Different forms of messaging depending on type/urgency/content of message
     • Generational differences in use/acceptance
     • Rudeness- talking on phone at bad times, calling at bad times, texting whilst eating etc. Rules enforced at cinemas & theatres
   • Resemblance / symbol
     • Shift from household appliance to personal gadget
       • Shift from luxury item to necessity
     • Objects of desire. Reflect personality, class, style, money
     • Emotional extension of ourselves- contains so much personal information we become attached to them. Having phone taken away can evoke intense anxiety
   • Phones accused of fuelling demise of English language
   • Cameras on phones has made everyone mini journalists.
   • Our sense of being part of social groups is no longer based on belonging to fixed places, but increasingly about belonging to communicative online networks.

3. Leopoldina Fortunati (2002)

   • uses the term 'nomadic intimacy' to describe how people in public situations use their mobile phones to interact with people they know 'chosen socialness' rather than interacting with strangers who are physically present (chance socialness)

4. C Wright Mills

   • He emphasises the importance of seeing the connections between individuals and everyday life and the greater social forces that constitute and course through society, and the importance of understanding our contemporary lives and social structure in historical context. Mills argued that doing so was an important part of coming to understand that what we often think are 'personal troubles' are often in fact 'public issues'
   • child safety and protection.- giving a child a phone with rules/conditions
     • Child vulnerability- open to the internet- being contactable by anyone
       • How much can you invade a child's privacy?
   • Consumerism and materialism
   • Health and safety- can phone signals cause diseases?
   • Private and public spaces- other people hearing/listening in
     • Monitoring people- call history/logs- information stored on phones.

5. Goffman

   • Dramaturgy- presentation of self
     • life is like a never ending play, like actors we play a role and act in specific ways to alter the audiences (people around us) impression of us
       • socialisation consists of learning how to play our assigned roles from other people. We enact roles in the company of others, who are inturn enacting theirs with us.
     • We spend most of our lives on the 'front stage' where we have to act our roles to the audience. sometimes we are allowed to retreat to the back stage of life, which is private areas where we don't have to act, we can be our true selves.
     • People are constantly engaged in the process of impression management, where people try to present themselves and behave in a way that will prevent embarrassment and manipulate the audience's impression of them
   • application to phones
     • presentation of self and impression management- phones say something about you, status symbol. objects of desire. display of money/class.
       • Image protection and business- fake phone calls, using phone to escape situation
     • Front stage & back stage- private & public conversations. what is users location? is it rude to ask?. call logs, remnants, history.
     • Territories of the self and personal space- intruding into other's aural space, speed and movement, civil inattention
     • improvisation and coordination- organisation 'on the hoof'- plans can be changed as they are happening. Need for permanent accessibility