My Mobile Phone: It is part of ME
I do think that you will agree with me that:
1. No other device has infiltrated society so widely and so quickly that lifestyles have altered subsequently, and no other portable medium is used so frequently that the mobile phone.
2. No other medium has been considered to be so personal that panic arises when it is lost. And you would wish the person dead if your mobile is stolen!
3. It is part of us.
4. It is as if the mobile phone has come to meet a biological need, more, it has become part of our bodies, and therefore of ourselves.
The role of the mobile phone
The mobile has become so embedded within society that it is indeed becoming part of the culture of late modern societies. Perceptions of the mobile phone have changed over the years; the mobile phone is taking on a new meaning and has superseded its utility as a medium solely for voice telephony; it is increasingly perceived as a multi-purpose device. Media Companies such as CNN, software companies such as Microsoft, and Internet giants such as Yahoo are all angling for a piece of this market.
Mobile telephony is beginning to affect the perceptions and, more importantly, the use of other content media as Townsend(2000) declares:
“… the cellular telephone, merely the first wave of an imminent invasion of portable digital communications tools to come, will undoubtedly lead to fundamental transformations in individuals’ perceptions of self and the world, and consequently the way they collectively construct the world” (Townsend,2000)
With the introduction of mobile phones, to a certain extent, communication has been abstracted from the constraints of physical space – people can be reached anytime, any place. Along with this, the use of time has also, to a certain extent, been abstracted from location; for instance, people can now use the time sitting in a bus or car to organize their meetings for the following day.
Moreover, social systems have become less location based and more people based. People can stay in touch on the move, maintaining a ‘nomadic intimacy’(Fortunati 2002). The social world has become a system of networked communities which are held together not by place, but by ‘symbolic processes’ such as trust building (Nyiri 2003). Communication and boundaries have become much more fluid. The result of this is that while people are physically in one place playing one role, they can be forced into another role, in the same physical space by a mobile call from someone from another context.
‘The old schedule of minutes, hours, days, and weeks becomes shattered into a constant stream of negotiations, reconfigurations, and rescheduling. One can be interrupted or interrupt friends and colleagues at any time. Individuals live in this phonespace and they can never let it go because it is their primary link to the temporally, spatially fragmented network of friends and colleagues they have constructed for themselves’ (Townsend 2000).
Traditionally, an individual’s social identity has been interlinked with their location within physical space. The revolution in mobile communication has partially replaced the old location-based paradigm with the new social network-based paradigm. Hence, The mobile acts on many levels, as a fashion statement, as a communicator, as a badge of identity and as a decoder. We all read signs from other people, we decode in effect everything around us.
Roland Barthes (1957) develops an approach to identity and consumption, in which he argues that there is always a dual aspect to consumption, that it fulfills a need but that it also conveys and is embedded within social and cultural symbols and structures. A mobile phone, for example, could be used for keeping in touch whilst also signifying an image of the kind of person one is or wishes to be seen to be. The mobile can be tailored to the individual by changing the ringtone, adding logos, stickers, the interface, the colour of the phone and now, more recently we have the Bluetooth Wireless connectivity, the VGA Camera as well as MP3/MP4 mobile enabled integrated devices.
Jean Baudrillard (1983) notes that all goods have meanings that are generated within the system of signs and symbols which engage the attention of the consumer. Mobile phones meet no biological need. Baudrillard sees the consumer as always actively creating a sense of identity, both individually and collectively. In this sense, the mobile phone can create or reinforce identity, the status of the device is much more meaningful that the actual device itself.
Recently, Nokia state that a mobile phone is the most intimate communicators device in the modern world. Within this privacy, intimate space can be created, constructed and reconstructed. Giddens(1991) theories about the reflexive project of self-identity are useful in thinking of how the mobile can create identities: Gidden writes: A self-identity has to be created and more or less continually reordered against the backdrop of shifting experiences of day-to-day life and the fragmenting tendencies of modern institutions. Hence, as intelligent mobile portals become available, the user will be able to select who and what is privileged access through this highly personal device. Mobile phone users are, in Gidden sense, clever people, at home with postmodern uncertainties and skilled in the reflexive reworking of identity.
In another study, Peter S. Alexander (2000) explores how teenagers define and re-define the identity of the mobile as a dynamic social technology. The symbolic identity of fashion and style becomes even more important as a catalyst for social interaction within teen subculture. Identity, however, is fluid for all groups, not just for teenagers. The mobile has many functions, not only as a communicator but also as a signifier for identity and an added device for consumption of communication. Always on technologies such as GPRS and 3G will be significant to this group. Connectivity will not only influence their patterns of mobility but also influence their identities and how they see themselves.
Nowadays, mobile phones are equipped with the GPS-Global Positioning Systems. This device is a miniaturized personal computer with a satellite connection which is able to signal your position accurately anywhere in the world with an error of one or meter or less. Hence, behind providing a service of mobility around the world, mobile technology also offers tracking of the individual. So, beware if you are lying to your boss!!!!
Hence, As various media become interactively connected, information flows more easily across technological, social, and geographical boundaries. The internet and other technologies such as cellular phones and digital video, enable people to organize their life in ways that overcome limits of time, space, identity, and ideology, resulting in the expansion and coordination of activities that would not likely occur by other means.
The importance or irrelevance of space, time and identity in relation to new media depends highly on the users and their level of interactivity within these medium. We might use and abuse of new forms of media but everything has to have a limit and a balance, be it in the cyberworld or the physical space we are living in.
posted by Yummmn @ 11/09/2006 09:01:00 PM
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