Mobile and Wireless Technologies

Sydney.
We're now in the final Mobile Media 2007 keynote session for today, which opens with Rich Ling. He begins with some data collected in Norway, which show that in age groups between 9 and 25, there is a tremendous change in the use of SMS, mobile, instant messaging, and email, as opposed to landline telephony. It is also evident that since the late 90s, mobile phone ownership amongst teens and adolescents has grown to close to 100% in Norway, and these groups are also the most prolific senders of text messages. Why this quick and thorough growth in mobile phone ownership especially in the teen age range? Rich suggests that teen emancipation is a key driver here.

Sydney.
I'm afraid I missed out on blogging the last session at Mobile Media 2007 as I was chairing it, so we're on to the post-lunch session already. My paper with Liu Cheng is in this session, and the PDF is available here, Powerpoint here. The first presenter is Jayde Cahir, though - one of the editors of the 'complex' issue of M/C Journal which we've just launched. Jayde begins with a focus on the Cronulla riots on December 2005, during which text messages and emails were instrumental in organising both sides of the riot which took place broadly between Anglo and Lebanese Australians. This led to the introduction of strong new laws criminalising the transmission of messaged inciting hate, and allowing for the confiscation of mobile phones.

Sydney.
The second keynote speaker this morning at Mobile Media 2007 is my colleague Stuart Cunningham. He begins by highlighting new approaches to the study of economics which are now being applied to the creative industries as an emergent innovative heart of the services sector. In the process, the creative industries are setting the template which other, more mainstream industries will follow. This enables an evolutionary growth process which embeds new and emergent technologies into the economy.

What such studies require is an understanding of economic structures as evolving, not static, and this cannot be measured easily through conventional means; the creative industries and the rest of the economy are linked in a dynamic relationship, and Stuart outlines four models for an understanding of this relationship (negative, neutral, positive, and emergent).

Sydney.
The second day of Mobile Media 2007 is now underway; we're starting with another double header of keynotes, and Genevieve Bell from Intel is the first speaker. Her focus is on the social, cultural, regulatory, and other contexts of mobile media developments, and she begins by asking what today constitutes a 'mobile device', given the multifaceted technological and other features of such devices - there is no fixed and stable notion of what that term describes. Such notions are also affected by wider developments in the discourses and conversations about mobile media, of course.

Sydney.
The second keynote speaker in this session at Mobile Media 2007 is Raul Pertierra, who shifts our focus to the Philippines. He asks whether the social changes now observable in the Philippines may require new theoretical models for their understanding much as the changes to society in the early industrial age required new theories at that time. This is even in spite of the still relatively limited take-up of new technologies in the Philippines, with a 15% Internet penetration and a 50% take-up rate for mobile telephony.

Sydney.
The final keynote session at Mobile Media 2007 for today starts with Dong Hoo Lee. Her focus is especially on the impact of camera phones on public practices in Korea, and the emergence of geospatial imagery which they have made possible. She compares this to the original moment of 'Kodak Culture', which focussed on playfulness, mobility, and spontaneity as incorporated into leisure activities and embodied in the figure of the 'Kodak girl'; through it, cameras also became tourists' identity badges, and snapshooting became the foremost activity for the travelling public, and shaped public spectatorship of tourist locations.

Sydney.
The post-lunch session at Mobile Media 2007 is started by Janey Gordon, who focusses on the use of mobile phones in critical situations, contributing to the public sphere; she's focussing especially on the SARS outbreak in China in 2003, the tsunami in the Indian ocean in 2004, and the London bombings in 2005. SARS was initially underreported, and news about it was restricted by the Chinese government, until a Beijing doctor became a whistleblower about the crisis; in this context, the mobile phone became a key tool for the spread of grassroots information about it. SMS messages were later also used to send out blanket information to the public in order to manage public knowledge.

Sydney.
The next session at Mobile Media 2007 starts with my paper, co-authored with Rachel Cobcroft, Jude Smith, and Stephen Towers (PDF available here, Powerpoint here).

Kathleen Cumiskey is the next speaker. She notes that there is significant research on the actual use of mobile phones, but less on the meanings users themselves ascribe to such use; her research focusses on such use stories, instead. The use of mobile phones during face-to-face interaction renders remote others present, while denying the presence of those physically present. This is related to the psychological idea of 'mattering': in the process of mobile phone use, remote participants are identified as mattering, while physically present participants are shown to matter less.

Sydney.
The next keynote speaker here at Mobile Media 2007 is Judy Wajcman. Her focus is especially on the question of work/life balance in a mobile environment, and she highlights the home-to-work and work-to-home spillover which mobile technologies have made possible. Such spillover can be both positive and negative, even though research focus has been mainly on negative aspects; this is a shift from earlier interest in developing family-friendly work/life policies. At any rate, the boundaries of home and work are clearly being blurred, and the mobile phone is often positioned as a threat to the quality of personal life (while others also see it as an enabling technology, of course).

Sydney.
I'm spending the next few days at the Mobile Media 2007 conference, which is already shaping up to be a very interesting event. The first plenary kicks of with Leopoldina Fortunati. She notes the important role of Australasian countries in academic debates around ICTs and mobile communication - a shift from a European focus in the 1990s. This has been driven by the increasingly important economic role of these countries; Asian countries now are the key market for mobile devices, of course (and Australia is in an interesting position as a bridge between Asian and European cultures). The research community on mobile communications has itself been highly mobile, therefore.