As if there hadn't been enough conferences over the last few weeks: I'm spending this weekend (mostly) at the Australian Teachers of Media conference here at QUT in Brisbane, which was organised by my colleague Michael Dezuanni. I'm also going to be a featured speaker on Sunday afternoon, talking about how to educate the coming 'Generation C' of produsers.
However, the conference starts with Mizuko Ito from the University of Southern California, speaking about the social life of mobile media. Japan is of course one of the key drivers of (3G) mobile media uptake at this point, especially within the younger generation. Mimi has mainly focussed on the use of digital technology amongst young people outside of school or work - i.e. in what are traditionally seen as non-educational contexts. Here, it is important to understand young people's uses of new technologies on their own terms - to regard them as digial natives and study their uses as such. Further, it is important to understand the social construction of such technologies. What emerges here are kid-driven peer-to-peer knowledge economies, from which adults have much to learn. Compared to traditional anthropology, Mimi's work also looks at a hybrid of the real (the physically local) and the virtual (the online and the remote); this can capture everyday action and local knowledge in personalised, non-institutionalised, and fluid settings.
