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[trammel]

Pan wrote:

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I just started a book called"New Tech, New Ties" (Ling). It's about the effects of mobile communications, in particular cells phones, in social interaction and cohesion. It's pretty interesting. I've been doing mobile development for educational projects the past few years, and this book provides a lot of interesting perspectives on what inspires us to use these devices, what we gain and what we lose, and an overview of this completely new paradigm being created.

From the "New Tech, New Ties" page:

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The message of this book is simple: the mobile phone strengthens social bonds among family and friends. With a traditional land-line telephone, we place calls to a location and ask hopefully if someone is "there"; with a mobile phone, we have instant and perpetual access to friends and family regardless of where they are. But when we are engaged in these intimate conversations with absent friends, what happens to our relationship with the people who are actually in the same room with us?

In New Tech, New Ties, Rich Ling examines how the mobile telephone affects both kinds of interactions—those mediated by mobile communication and those that are face to face. Ling finds that through the use of various social rituals the mobile telephone strengthens social ties within the circle of friends and family—sometimes at the expense of interaction with those who are physically present—and creates what he calls "bounded solidarity."

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/defau...2&tid=11403

I think it's funny that I'm posting this as Oxy (someone I meet and came to know completely via the Net over the last five years) watches a muted TV of music videos and another friend hooked up his mp3 player to the speakers here. Each one of us in the company and interacting with one another while still inside of our own media bubbles and, in a very real sense, including all of you and visiting guests.

[Pan]

Sorry for the delay on this. I had a slew of responsibilities pop up the past few weeks. I've managed to read 104 of the 180 page book. A couple things stand out... The author, Rich Ling, spends the first 80 pages or so discussing the works of the social theorists Durkheim, Goffman and Colins. This was probably a necessary step -- since non-sociology/anthropology readers probably aren't familiar with that background. It is a bit tedious that Line references them constantly to describe his theories though. He spends a bit too much time trying to trying to stretch the connections between the traditional theorists and social research of cell usage. Several times he says "If we carry his theories a bit further" ... "If extend this to mean...", etc. At any rate, once the background was covered, the really interesting meat of the analysis begins.

In the bigger picture, Ling says that we've minimized the amount of traditional group ritual in our lives and replaced it with daily, mediated rituals that bond members of a community. We have fewer and fewer large group ritualized experiences and for more inter-personal ones. He says that the cell phone provides a mediated experience along those lines. The (generally) two people are sharing a ritual event, but in a mediated fashion. He argues that the cell phone bonds the users in several ways. In one aspect, the device itself is a point of shared bonding ritual in our lives (by checking out and getting excited about each other's latest gadgets). There is of course the bonding of the conversation of the callers. He then goes on to argue that the use of a cell phone also provides a set type of ritual interactions for those whom are in our immediate area when we use the device. He outlines several scenarios of how we interact with the local environment while also navigating the phone call experience. His observations of these scenarios was for the most part dead on. He's sorta brushed over texting though, saying that it's a less obtrusive method of communicating which can be done with subtrafuge, unlike an actual call. On the one hand I agree. However, he neglects to point out that texting requires looking down at a screen and clicking away at a small keyboard. In a meeting of several people, it can still be a disruption (or sign of inattention) in the immediate environment. In can change the interactions in the immediate environment.

It's a good book so far. It took some pages to get into the flow of what he was throwing down. I'm just now starting to to get into the groove with it. We'll see how things go. Its particularly interesting for me as a mobile apps developer and someone who has been involved in several educational projects using mobile devices in the classroom.

Oh, also, along the lines of this thread...

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/12...ternet-Use.aspx

OK, so sorry for the delay getting back into this, but it's a good thread and I'd like to hear what thoughts folks have to say on mobiles in society.