Comments on: Mobile Media 2007

by: melgregg

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:54:12 +0000

Yes I agree - thanks for writing! I also loved Genevieve Bell’s comments on the phenomenal relationship between religion and mobile tech: not something you’re likely to anticipate focusing on Australian teenagers! Her point about certain countries never having a desktop experience as a starting point was also really useful for me.

by: michiel

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:35:40 +0000

Good read! Agree completely with your point about the bias towards teenagers. I forgot who, but during the conference one of the speakers said something in the vein of “we should focus on teenagers because they show us what the future of mobile phoning will be”.
Another bias that was very apparent and which I find very interesting is the one about Japan and increasingly south-Korea as “countries of the future”. Here too there seems to be this idea of ‘look at those countries and you’ll see what mobile phone future looks like’.
So instead of this teleological idea of future “convergence” according to patterns already laid out by east-Asian teenagers, we might consider the many divergent futures of this relatively young collection of technologies.

by: M-H

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 08:19:59 +0000

Thanks for this interesting post. As an older technology worker and PhD student, it really resounded with me. I think the use of technology by people over 40 is a neglected research area.

by: annap

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 07:32:33 +0000

I will delurk to say how much I like this post (esepcially reading it against the one that comes before it where you are off to London again). Two reasons:
1) it made me feel slightly better about *not* going to the other side of the world to give a paper (and go to the Cultural Studies Now conference), which is the first time in my fledging career I have had to admit - professionally - that my body just can’t hack it. You make some interesting points regarding this, and I look forward to seeing how this plays out in your research.
2) your critique on the emphasis of youth is very interesting, and reminded me of Rob Latham’s (not necessarily original to him, but he puts it well) analysis of how ‘youth’ so often stands in for everything capitalism loves about itself. The conflation between ‘youth’ and ‘new’ and ‘technology’ (according to Latham) reaches back to the Fordism, where young workers were seen as ideal employees in the new factories because of their ability to learn how to use machinery more quickly than older workers, and this linkage seems to be replayed ad nauseum in the emphasis on youth in the research you discuss.

by: seonaid

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:41:50 +0000

Oh my goodness! How very well said.
[ubuntu = neotopic mobile ideal for the non-mac galaxy?]