Taken for Grantedness review

The Information Society, 2002

The current explosion in mobile computing and telecommunications technologies holds the potential to transform "everyday" time and space, as well as changes to the rhythms of social institutions. Sociologists are only just beginning to explore what the notion of "mobility" might mean when mediated through computing and communications technologies, and so far, the sociological treatment has been largely theoretical. This article seeks instead to explore how a number of dimensions of time and space are being newly reconstructed through the use of mobile communications technologies in everyday life. The article draws on long-term ethnographic research entitled "The Socio-Technical Shaping of Mobile Multimedia Personal Communications," conducted at the University of Surrey. This research has involved ethnographic eldwork conducted in a variety of locales and with a number of groups. This research is used here as a resource to explore how mobile communications technologies mediate time in relation to mobile spaces. First the paper offers a review and critique of some of the major sociological approaches to understanding time and space. This review entails a discussion of how social practices and institutions are maintained and/or transformed via mobile technologies. Ethnographic data is used to explore emerging mobile temporalities. Three interconnected domains in mobile time are proposed: rhythms of mobile use, rhythms of mobile use in everyday life, and rhythms of mobility and institutional change. The article argues that while these mobile temporalities are emerging, and offer new ways of acting in and perceiving time and space, the practical construction of mobile time in everyday life remains rmly connected to well-established time-based social practices, whether these be ; web site: http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk institutional (such as clock time, "work time") or subjective (such as "family time").

The British Journal of Sociology, 2010

Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies, 2005

In considering the mobile phone I shall here return to a text by Shuhei Hosokawa on an earlier form of mobile media, 'The Walkman Effect'. 1 This text, published just a few years after Sony's introduction of the Walkman in 1980, is less about the Walkman as technological artifact than about the emergence of a cultural object at a specific historical moment, with the event of the Walkman -or Walkman as event -and with the kind of spatial and urban strategies it makes possible. In March 2005 Sony Ericsson unveiled the Walkman phone, but my interest is likewise not in the evolution of the mobile as media player or multifunction device. 2 Rather, I shall consider Hosokawa's insights into the relationship between the Walkman and the embodiment and context of Walkman users, and how these can help us to account for the way that the mobile phone operates simultaneously as a node within networks and the point of intersection between the virtual space of telecommunications and physical or embodied space. Like Hosokawa, I am interested less in the object in itself, than in the object 'under use'. I shall approach this by drawing upon a consideration of the practice of artists and technologists exploring social and creative applications of mobile technology, as well as upon certain representations of the mobile phone user within popular culture.

Open and Interdisciplinary Journal of Technology Culture and Education, 2010

Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2013

This paper stems from the issue of the mobility phenomenon, through the pathway tread by individuals in need of connection and access to an uninterrupted flow of information. In this informational, cultural and technological context, the presence of mobile devices, especially cell phones, stands out quite significantly. Such artifacts, which feature not only voice services, but also texting information and Internet connections, are increasingly present in urban settings, changing access, production, and dissemination of information. Therefore, on account of the mobilities paradigm and its connections to globalization theories and information societies, this article has aimed to discuss the role of information and mobile technologies in the constitution of the contemporary mobility pattern. Moreover, this paper has sought to identify and characterize the defining elements of the mobility era through information flows. Here, a prominent factor was the strength of the symbolic construction of a connected society that is constantly available for interactive processes. The connection made possible with the use of mobile technologies has become one of the most significant aspects of mobility for informational flows: connections are established for entertainment, work, study, location, consumption of goods and expression of feelings. Information processes resulting from a range of interactional operations and the mobility implemented by mobile technology have become increasingly complex and established new paradigms for the production, access, and dissemination of current information. This calls for a broader and more accurate view of what the era of mobility and connection is and what its demands are for a continuous flow of information.

Amparo Lasen, Lynne Hamill (eds.) (2005) Wireless World: Mobiles - Past, Present and Future, London: Springer, pp. 29-60

2006

Foremost, the mobile phone is a technological artefact, a man-made object created for practical purposes. In this paper, however, the mobile phone is understood as a cultural artefact, an object which is far more than a mere technology transforming people's action and society. The paper's title contains the corresponding hypothesis: The meaning of a mobile age amounts, at the least, to what I will later call 'cultural noise'. But how to approach a hypothesis that even transcends itself, as indicated by the word 'just' and the question mark? In the following, an unusual question is answered using unusual frames of reference.

… Journal of Information …, 2006

This paper examines how the use of mobile phones influences the temporal boundaries that people enact in order to regulate and coordinate their work and non-work activities. We investigate both the structural and interpretive aspects of socio-temporal order, so as to gain a fuller appreciation of the changes induced by the use of mobile phones. With specific reference to professionals working in traditional, physically based and hierarchically structured organizations, we found that mobile phone users are becoming more vulnerable to organizational claims and that as a result 'the office' is always present as professionals, because of the use of mobile phones, become available 'anytime'. This is enabled by the characteristics of the technology itself but also by users' own behaviour. In the paper, we discuss the properties of the emerging socio-temporal order and show how mobile phones may render the management of the social spheres in which professionals participate more challenging.

Media International Australia, Incorporating …, 2009