spaLectures Mobile Media and Society
Lecture 1
Predecessors of the mobile phone
- Optical mechanical systems – the semaphore
Landline, Telegraph, Post, Pidgins. Communicate across large
distances.
Semaphore: optical system. Connected to making war. Really fast
communication. Moscow to St. Peterburg in 15 minutes. We need the technology
to intervene.
Supervening social necessities: a real or perceived social need that requires
change
Needs occasioned by the consequences of other technological
innovation
o E.g., battleship radio communication
Needs occasioned by direct social forces
o E.g., industrialization and commercialization gave way to the
modern business corporation, built around the office and its
key machines—telephone, typewriter and calculator—which
make it function.
Ex. Industrialization Landline phone.
The telegraph
What made the telegraph necessary? In the slipstream of the railway system.
Real time communication.
“The numerous accidents which have occurred on railways seem to call for a
remedy of some kind; and when future improvements shall have augmented the
speed of railway travelling to a velocity which cannot at present be deemed safe,
then every aid which science can afford must be called in to promote this object.
Now, there is a “contrivance” [ early name for a telegraph]…by which, at every station along
the railway line, it may be seen, by mere inspection of a dial, what is the
exact situation of the engines running, either towards, or from, that station, and
at what speeds they are travelling.
Mobile phone
The fixed or ‘wired’ telephone (late 19th C)
Graham Bell (and other ‘inventors’)
Intended for music & live entertainment
Grew out of telegraph industry, which affected
its imagined uses
Commercial operations in the modern office
Later: the household ‘manager’
Bell invented the phone. He thought it would be used as broadcast technology.
Grew out of the telegraph. It got a second life, because of speed of
communication. For hospitals and news etc. It was never a household technology.
In a certain point it came into household. To manage household in a better way,
not to make calls.
,Moral panics concern media. With each new innovation: panics, wide spread
concerns (ex. Games – Violence). Mobile phones for woman at home had the
panic that they could have affairs.
Social shaping of technology
The meaning of technology is socially constructed:
Technology is a social product: Not only technological, but also political,
economical, cultural and social contexts affect the way a technology is
designed, works, is appropriated, adapted, etc… Social shaping of the
telephone:
Only around 1920 (!!!): recognition and acceptance of the sociable uses of the
telephone
When technology is designed and appropriated by users, it does not happen in
avoid. We have to be aware of all of the context. Political, economic, social.
Technology itself is not neutral, decisions are made by humans. Developers
choose adult or toddler automatic cars.
Sometimes it is not use for what it was originally invented (then developers can
change it).
Scandinavian are mostly the first to have technology. People with money bought
the expensive phones. Children first could send sms for free. That was changed
fast. Initially conceived as a meaningless byproduct…
Not bound to one location for your communication.
- Wireless: radio.
Portable (‘wireless’) communication
o Radio-communication
(Marconi’s wireless telegraphy for
maritime communication)
o Mobile radio
o Telepoint applications: e.g., Ericsson
o Mobile ‘radio telephone’
One-way car radio (police): 1920
Two-way car radio: 1930ies (Motorola)
- Cellular: signal is picked up. We were the first in Europa with the globalized
standards.
Already developed around 1950 by AT & T due to scarcity radio spectrum,
but several technical difficulties to overcome. 1980ies parallel
development of other portable technologies
o CB radios, pagers (~ sms)
- Motorola’s ‘Brick phone’ (1973). Different nations used different systems
that were incompatible
o need for a common standard
o digitization
o Europe: the GSM (Global System for Mobiles) standard
Technical evolution coincided with new features located in the device itself
(dialing register, Voice mail, tracking of calls, clock, …).
,Almost 100% of penetration in Europa. But is Asia it is lower. Fixed telephone
infrastructure is quite expensive. Infrastructure is not there. The mobile aspect is
not the new aspect, but the connectivity. Diffuse very quickly.
Leapfrogging development
Benefits are two-fold: mobility AND connectivity, but central =
connectivity
Leapfrogging development?
Yes in terms of infrastructure, unclear in terms of economy (e.g.,
trishaw drivers)
Trishaw: very competitive. To make agreement beforehand or organize business
more.
Leapfrogging is understood as taking such a large step that you step over
an obstacle. In searching for an apt definition I stumbled upon one that
exactly captures what leapfrogging refers to in the context of the diffusion
of mobile media use in the global South:
"Leapfrogging is the notion that areas which have poorly-developed
technology or economic bases can move themselves forward rapidly
through the adoption of modern systems without going through
intermediary steps." (from: https://leapfrog.cl/en/leapfrogging).
If you look at the Westernized, industrialized world, we first had fixed
telephones and wired internet first. Then came mobile phones and the
mobile internet. Thus, we went from no network infrastructure to wired
network infrastructure to wireless infrastructure. In the global South, the
infrastructure for wired telephony and internet is lacking in many areas
(never installed because too expensive and no economic impetus,
especially in rural areas where distances are vast). In these regions, the
intermittent step of installing a wired networks is not taken - these areas
leapfrog immediately from no network to wireless network.
Functionally equivalent to landline phone in terms of social and business uses
Better market information
Transport efficiency
More distributed economic development
Access to emergency services
Increased international economic connectivity
Break isolation
o E.g., the Masai
Oftentimes shared access. No need for roaming or broad intercity
connectivity.
What to consider mobile media?
Smart phone can make it difficult to tell what mobile media is.
Mobile media = are media that register & transfer data from, or deliver
data to an object or user who is in motion. Person to person, Person to
object, Object to object.
, Mobile social media can loosely be considered software, applications, or
services accessed through mobile devices that allow users to connect with other
people and to share information, news, and content (Humphreys, 2013)
80% is devoted to social media. Real screen interactivity.
Psychology vs sociology
Psychology= Individual (cognition, emotion, behavior).
Sociology= Society (how a group functions, how it is organized: micro level (you
and friends, you and partner) or macro level (Dutch and internationals, ex.
cultural norms).
#Me too is about that power is not equally distributed between men and women.
Gender is not neutral. It determines the way you do things in life. Society is
organized in a certain way. Because of that we do things in a certain way.
Religion, age.
Social structures: patterns organized in life. How we do things. The structure
forces people a bit to do things. Patterns in the ways in which people organize
themselves, and that these patterns of organization – also known as social
structures – shape the ways in which people behave
structures enable and constrain human action (Giddens, 1984)
e.g., gender roles: social structures that prescribe how men
and women are expected to behave
But… there is also human agency = an individual’s capacity to reflect on
structures, to reproduce, but also adapt, challenge and resist them
This ‘duality’ between structure and agency is an interplay that
oftentimes reveals how power is distributed in society
On the one hand we have agency and structures. We find a way in between.
Prescriptive: how you to things in life. Ex. All woman already shave their armpits.
Because of their prescriptive nature, they make it logical to organize things
repeatedly and systematically in a certain manner. There are social structures in
mobile communication technologies. When Apparatgeist intersects with general
social structures, these differences in uses and meanings of a technology will
oftentimes reveal elements of group membership and social identity, for
example, when they demarcate a culture, group or social category.
Technology give possibilities, but constrain you also in certain ways.
Dominant affordance
Personal: document personal things in life by photos/video/text.
