This webpage accompanies a guest lecture for Professor Warnick's COM 300 class, Thursday 13 November 2003.

Perpetual contact or profit contract? A critical look at mobile telephony in human communication.

Source: Sheffield Hallam University

Let's start on a serious note:

CNN and Seattle P-I (2003, Oct 31): Man drops cell phone in train toilet, jams arm.

And then something kind of serious:

CNN (2004, Jan 21): Cell phone most hated, needed invention.

1. What's all the fuss about?

Why Nokia's getting all excited:

In 2002, we estimate the global subscriber base to have grown to an estimated 1,125 million users, and project this number to exceed 1.5 billion users in 2005.

Krissy Scatton (U of Kansas student): Regardless of why my life is dull as dirt, my position remains the same: I don’t understand this obsession with cell phones. I know that’s not going to change anything; cell phones are ingrained in our culture now, just like TV’s, VCRs and computers. And like people grew accustomed to widespread use of these items, I’ll grow accustomed to the rampant use of cell phones. However, I’ll always cherish those by-gone days when I could walk down the street on a peaceful summer day, without someone in my ear saying, "Can you hear me now?"

From an Orange ad campaign: Mobile phone ownership is universal, and people use them constantly. If you don't have a mobile, you're effectively a non-person.
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2. So, where did it all start?

Source: TelecomWriting

Source: BBC News

From landline to mobile telephony: thinking about distance, speed, clarity, mobility and functionality.

But why there and not here?
(see Katz & Aakhus reading)

Katz & Aakhus's (2002:6) correlation of penetration rates and cost per minute of a cell phone call. (Based on a 2000 article in Scientific American.)

Warning: correlation does not equal causation.

In thinking about why some countries are big on cell phones and others are less switched on, we need to think about interplay between availability, cost and economy and, perhaps, other cultural factors.

Cyberatlas/Jupiter Research. (2003, Jul 25). Smaller is better than smarter.

Clearly, mobile telephones are also about identity, fashion and lifestyle.

In popular discourse, people are torn between two opinions:

1. Liberation brought about by increased control and accessibility.
2. Enslavement brought about my loss of control and accessibility.

3. The image and the reality

What is the difference between the way that mobile telephony is sold to us and what we actually want from it? Is there a difference?

Click on Catherine:

(oh, and her humble origins in Wales)

Now click on possibly the most annoying man on the planet:

4. Folk framing and expert framing

I am interested in what Katz & Aakhus (2002:12) call the 'micro-level of communication':

How is this communication technology 'folded into the warp and woof of life through private talk'?

... and corporate framing:

BBC. (2001, Dec 03). Bus ride to the future.

As scholars, we need to think about how mobile phones differ from landline phones. In terms of social impact, what is accounted for by the 'mobility' of these phones?

What is the impact of wireless technology on human communication? What can wireless technology tell us about human communication?

Does mobile telephony replace or enhance? Is the cell phone used for work or leisure, practice or pleasure?

5. SMS: What 'end users' really want

These days, we are no longer seen as people, we are consumers - no, in fact, according to Intel, we are merely 'end users'! According to their report Building the Wireless Tomorrow, this is what we 'end users' will want:

... reliable wireless capability, seamless roaming between networks, location-aware services and self-configuring devices with long battery life.

I don't think so!

Text-messaging really caught the business people by surprise, turned them on their heads and had them running to keep up!!

Orange Offer

Why is text-messaging interesting? 'Technological Imperative' versus 'Communication Imperative'.

Why is text-messaging fun? The everyday reaity.

6. Where to next? The future.

Anywhere, anytime...

The dance of Commerce (in black)
and Communication (the colourful one!)

Some key concepts in thinking about the reality and future of mobile telephony: planned obsolescence, technological convergence and corporate mergers

• VZN and MSN
• The Guardian newspaper. (2003, Oct 10). Microsoft and Orange in fresh mobile assault.

Anywhere, anytime, any device is Intel's slogan for the future as they position themselves to gives us what we need - or is it, to give us what they want?

Then there's the wireless promise to close the digital divide - what do you think is the play-off between human contact and global capital?

The WiFi Opportunity for Developing Nations
UNICTTF (United Nations Information & Communication Technologies Task Force).

Wireless takes flight in Afghanistan
(CNN, 2002, Oct 28)

Reading

This lecture is based on the following stimulus reading:

Katz, James E. & Aakhus, Mark A. 2002a. Introduction: Framing the issue. In James E. Katz & Mark A. Aakhus (Eds), Perpetual contact: Mobile communication, private talk, public performance (pp. 1-13). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Other sources/resources

• Bellis, Mary. (2002). Selling the cell phone: The history of cellular phones. (for About.com)

• An excellent bibliography of academic writing about mobile telephony and text-messaging is made available online by Nalini Kotamraju (University of California at Berkeley, USA) and Nina Wakeford (University of Surrey, UK)

• Brown, Barry; Green, Nicola & Harper, Richard. (eds). 2001. Wireless world: Social and interactional aspects of the mobile age. London: Springer Verlang.

• Thurlow, Crispin & Brown, Alex. (2003). Generation Txt? The sociolinguistics of young people's text-messaging. Discourse Analysis Online.

• Intel Research Laboratory Seattle