Moving Cultures. Mobile Communication in Everyday Life

Abstract Are we on the threshold of a major mutation in the way we communicate? In the past, the arrival of powerful new communication tools has always been a cultural turning point. This book addresses the social and cultural dimensions of the “mobile turn” in everyday communication. How do emerging mobile communication technologies make sense of our daily life, and how do people make sense of these technological artefacts? The book reports the major results of a 5 years research on appropriation and domestication of mobile communication technologies in everyday life. This research is the first study ever made relying on the analysis of recorded naturally occurring conversation via mobile phone. Besides its sustantive results, the book is of major interest from a methodological point of view. As these communication technologies have become part of our daily environment, they have freed us of many of the constraints of time and distance that used to modulate our lives. Overcoming and crossing spatial and temporal boundaries has become more than a way to facilitate activities and manage multiple tasks more effectively. These practical functions conceal deeper cultural and social issues because they bring us to rethink and recreate the cultural aspects of the ways we live together. Even the simplest everyday notions of being present or absent, being here or there, being alone or with someone, now need to be redefined. The same can be said for interaction rituals that are taken for granted. What has become of a conversation at dinner time when people keep their mobile phone on while having dinner together? The rights, duties, expectations and even codes of face - to - face participants now need to be negotiated with those of the ghost participants who may join the conversation at any time. People “out there” can be here and this leads to recreate the cultural forms of the social encounter. Mobile communication has also triggered a process of (re)construction of interpersonal relationships and social links. In a world where parents and children can always be in touch even when far from one another, the mobile phone is much more than a simple technology for coordinating activities. Some crucial and somehow paradoxical tasks of parenting, such as responsibility and control, as well as the fostering of independence and autonomy for their children, seem to be accomplished in new ways. Working as a new panoptikon, the mobile phone allows for remote parenting and thus forces us to rethink our cultural model of “being a parent.” These are examples of the many ways by which emerging communication technologies make sense of daily life and lead us to rethink and recreate our forms of social participation and our cultural ways of life. However the reverse is also true. People constantly domesticate technologies and interpret their use according to their culture and lifestyle. For example, teenagers who use the SMS to chat, flirt and gossip and who engage in never ending written conversations have reinterpreted the technology to suit their needs. The logic of a - synchronous exchanges has been converted into the synchronicity and the ongoing coordination of oral conversation. In teen culture, messaging has little to do with a shorthand means of sending information quickly. It is more a verbal performance through which young people create and maintain their social links. Regardless of the forms of communication suggested by and inscribed in the technology itself, teenagers have radically reinterpreted its meaning and function in accordance with their own specific culture. The authors focus mainly on research on mobile phone uses in contemporary society. However their analysis has greater implications. The study provides a way of understanding the social processes and the cultural issues that are at stake with respect to emerging communication technologies. By reflecting on the ways human beings use tec...