Methodologies
Mobile Privatization (Williams 1974)can be defined as the users identity moving away from home, the identity becomes attached to a perceived vision of home and where the mobile phone becomes the anchor. In a sense “Mobile Privatization” is a contradiction; a user of the mobile phone can exist physically and geographically at home while being transported to another space. The idea of home for Williams is a shrinking social space where individuals allow themselves to become isolated but have increased ability of mobility, a system of “mobile privatised social relations” (Du Gay 2001).
Glocalization (Fernback 2007) When one looks at mobile technology, one notice’s through mobile technology people’s social networks expand while linking themselves closer to the local community.
Nagara Mobilism (Fujimoto 2005)based on William’s mobile privatisation. Nagara means “while doing something else” the ability to parallel process text video and sound while riding a bike. There exists a conflict between the geographic space called home and the reference to the virtual home. The conflict arises when public space becoming private.
Interspace (Hulme 2005) Transit zone between the social, work and home.
Hans Geser uses four main attributes that show how mobile technology undermines societal development:
1: by increasing the pervasiveness of primary, particularistic social bonds.
2: by reducing the need for time based scheduling and coordination.
3: by undermining institutional controls and replacing location based with person based communication systems.
4: by providing support for anachronistic “pervasive roles”
Technological Determinism “Technologies can be designed, consciously or unconsciously, to open certain social options and close others” (Henrikson 2004).
Mobile Phone Definition an intimate techno social tethering, a personal technology supporting communication, that is constant, light weight and a mundane presence in everyday life. Mobile technology allows the creation of a fluid mobile time undermining fixed institutes, timetables and dissolving the boundaries between social systems with the ability to merge public and private spaces. Another possible definition for Mobile technology “Mobile technology both colonises and adapts to the structure of existing practices and places” and “ubiquitous computing is not about technical features or seamless integration but as a social technical practice of engaging with information technologies” (Ito 2005). The mobile phone as an extension of the local becomes a symbol of identity through customization and domestication (Hjorth 2005). The mobile is not specifically about technology or freedom, but a device that supports communications as a personal technology creating a “social tether” (Ito 2005) while being invisible in everyday life. Keeping in mind the user adapts the technology to suit their needs and the social circles which they occupy.
Mobile technology gives the user the capacity to use the Mobile phone as a social shield protecting themselves from certain forms of social interaction and only connecting to the “highly familiar predictable relationships”(Fortunati 2000). This can be seen in the way the mobile user can insulate themselves within the own social group. Ichiyo Habuchi refers to this as “telecocooning” where technology stops certain forms of communication confining communications to smaller pre-existing socially intimate networks.
Negative social effects of Mobile technology a “pacifier for adults” an umbilical cord connecting themselves to their intimate social groups. Giving the user “a permanent channel of communications during periods of spatial distance” (Ling 2004).The negative side of this is that the user starts to lose certain abilities. Such as the ability to make their own judgements and the loss of specific social skills. As they communicate only within their own groups they lose the ability to interact in unpredictable situations. This happens because of the mobile phone user becoming used to strongly defined social encounters. This closed interaction leads to the splintering of languages into informal sub-cultural forms of expression.
With the mobiles fluid time there is no longer a need to look ahead, before with fixed phone lines here was a need to plan and once plans were made it was difficult to change. Systems that require planning and schedules such as public transport, schools and other institutes, create a tension between the fluid dynamic mobile time and fixed schedules. Townsend remarks that minutes, hours and days are all shattered into a constant stream of negotiations, reconfigurations and rescheduling. Able to interrupt friends and colleagues at any time connected to a “phonespace” unable to give up this link as it is the only line that connects us to the temporary spatially fragmented network of friends and colleagues that they have constructed for themselves. Studies have shown the greatest effect of technology is that the current situation becomes dominant while the impact of rules and schedules decline. Which have impacted how interspace is used. Interspace which is defined as a time of transit between two events such as home and work. Since the arrival of mobile phones, interspace has become a field of restructuring allowing a person in interspace to redefine events through mobile use. The capacity of the mobile phone to redefine space has led to the mobile phone user been forced into multiple specific roles in the same location. Before the mobile phone, social identities were generally location based. Where a person was situated defined their identity based on a fixed communication system.
Ling mentions that mobile telephony has cut out the intermediary there is no longer a need for a secondary system that is not synchronised with mobiles fluid time and does not allow the direct interaction that mobile technologies offer.
The importance of 3G networks is that they increase the ability to customise technology, bringing about the idea of “user as content producer” an example of this would be I-mode an mobile based internet system is seen as giving users the ability to create a more personal and unique identity, while being able to add more warmth, humanity and immediacy to technology by bringing warmth to technology. Studies have also shown the main uptake of mobiles is the need for security and safety. Because of this need for safety mobile users have given up certain personal freedoms to be connected and available at all times. Instead of an invisible social controlling force, the control comes from our own social groups.
