Goggin G. Cell Phone
Culture. Mobile Technology in Everyday Life. L., N.Y., 2006
The story [of SMS] has a slight
resemblance to those of the Norwegian fairy tale character Askeladden, who
picks up all kinds of items that he encounters given the presumption that it
may come to use some day. In the adventure they always do, resulting in a
massive success.
(Trosby 2004: 192)
When they had the campaign that
allowed you to send SMS for two cents a piece, we pretty much sat there all day
with the mobile and probably sent a few hundred messages in all . . . For three
or four hours we just sat on the bed sending messages to one another.
(Sanna, Finnish fourteen-year-old,
quoted in Kasesniemi 2003: 21)
Texting in the
(Elwood-Clayton 2003: 23S)
So far I have focused on the
production of cell phone culture, considering narraнtives of its early history,
especially as a portable voice telephony artefact, and then reviewing, in
chapter 3, how influential corporations, in particular Nokia and Vodafone, made
important contributions through their ideas of use, branding, and advertising.
In this chapter, I wish to turn to another, interlinked aspect of the circuit
of culture', cell phone culture Ч namely consumption.
To explore consumption and cell
phone culture, I turn to a celebrated, almost proverbial episode : text
messaging. There has been much fascination in studying, cataloguing, and
debating the varieties and intricacies of text messaging, and how it has
modified social, media, and cultural practices. Rather than repeating this
work
here, or drawing on new, empirical work, my intention is interpretative.
What I wish to do is to attempt a
history, or perhaps a historiography, of text messaging, to gain insights into
its place in cell phone culture. Text messaging is not only an intriguing case
study in cultural consumption and user experimenta tion, as we shall find out
later; what it signifies for cell phone culture is at the heart of much public
and commercial disquiet and contention about the future of mobile media.
Doing the history of text messaging
Text
messaging has been the subject of much animated debate and study, including two
book-length collections (Glotz and Bertschi 2005; Harper, Palen, and Taylor
2005), but I have been able to find only one scholarly account of SMS history
(Taylor and Vincent 2005). As I have already mentioned, there are many difficulнties
at this relatively early moment in doing the history of cell phones, let alone
text messaging. Nonetheless, thinking about the development of text messaging
provides an occasion to think about how such history might be done. What I
would like to draw upon here is the influential approach to understanding the
itineraries and adventures of technology offered by actor-network theory, which
not only offers many challenges to traditional theories of technology, as I sugнgested
in chapter 1, but also opens up new historical and cultural-theoretical
approaches.
Textual beginnings
Txt msg ws an acidnt. no 1 expeted it. Whn the 1st txt
msg ws sent, in 1993 by Nokia eng stdnt Riku Pihkonen, the telcom cpnies
thought it ws nt important. SMS - Short Message Service - ws nt considrd a majr
pt of GSM. Like mny teks, the *pwr* of txt - indeed, the *pwr* of the fon - wz
discovrd by users. In the case of txt mssng, the usrs were the yng or poor in
the W and E. (Agar 2003: 105)
As Jon Agar notes, text messaging
was considered to be something of a minor service (Agar 2003). However, this
insight is more complicated than it appears. Certainly at the start, technology
designers, manufacturers, and cell phone comнpanies had been preoccupied with
transferring telephone capabilities and culture to the cell phone platform. The
development of the first-generation analogue cell phone transmission systems
around the world is evidence of this. However, espeнcially in the move to
develop digital transmission systems for the cell phone, and standards that
would embody these and promote common technologies, as well as in anticipating
their implementation, consideration had been given to the data transmission
capabilities of cell phones. With the growth of data communications from the
1960s onwards - and the use of modems over telecommunications networks, the
dawning of the Internet, not to mention telex, videotext, teletext, and fax
services - data services over cellular and wireless technologies were of some
interest (there is a historical parallel here too, of course, given that
wireless telegraphy was a precursor data service to its cellular radio
antecedents).
In
telecommunications, among the most robust and perhaps best-engineered forms of
data services were those associated with the Integrated Services Digital
Network (ISDN). The ISDN system involved a dedicated digital network that
provided data as well as voice channels on the same subscriber line - something
not possible again in a widespread manner until voice over Internet protocol
started to become widely used over broadband connections. At a certain stage
ISDN was seen as the natural progression path for telecommunications networks
(for example Dorros 1987), but owing to the typical pricing policies in the
1980s and early to mid 1990s still shaped by older telco culture and slow to
change (cf. ACCC 1998), as well as the fast emerging mix of alternative
technologies (not least the Internet, faster modems for dial-up connections,
then broadband) (ASTEC 1995), ISDN (often archly referred to as 'ft Still
Doesn't Nothing', failedа in most
countries to move beyond its base of business clients to domestic cusнtomers.
Given the prominence of ISDN in telecommunications circles, it was unsurprising
that it was contemplated in early visions of GSM. In the list of basic
requirements for GSM services in the first action plan in December 1982, it was
stipulated that the 'services and facilities offered in the public switched
telephone networks and the public data networks . . . should be available in
the mobile system' (Hillebrand 2001c: 264). In 198S, however, a concept for
data and other services was agreed that borrowed important structural elements
from ISDN, yet recognised that 'GSM is not a mobile ISDN' (2001c: 266).
Although there were some who supported GSM having data capabilities and
channels akin to ISDN, the difficulty faced was that there was neither capacity
in the system nor the means to gain the relevant efficiency needed from the
scarce spectrum. ISDN was also a more stable service, as customers were just
connected to one fixed line in their telecommunications carrier's network as
opposed to the emerging issues in mobile telephony with the need for roaming in
other countries and services provided by a range of competing providers.
Instead of fully encompassing data,
GSM was optimised for telephony, rememнbering that one of the abiding issues in
the 1982Ч5 period was the transition for cellular phones from having their
natural place in vehicles to becoming hand-held. Those participating in the
standards-setting judged it was feasible to envisage a range of data services
with data rates up to 9.6 kbs, a level that expectations quickly exceeded. Such
data services, for the 'mobile office' (Hillebrand 2001c: 266) were what are
termed circuit-switched (the fundamental, historical mode of telephone
networks) rather than packet-switched (for a succinct primer on this
distinction pivotal to Internet technologies, see Clarke 2004). With these
constraints in mind, what was proposed was short message transmission:
GSM was seen at that time as a car telephony system
(the discussion on the viability of hand portables in the same network was
still ongoing). So a typical application scenario was a plumber or other
technician doing some repair work in the customer's home could receive short
messages in his car waiting in front of the home. Another scenario was to
enable a user to receive a short notice while he was engaged on a call.
(Hillebrand 2001c: 266)
Ironically, because of its technical
characteristics, SMS 'can be seen as the first packet switched service' in GSM
(2001c: 266), and so a harbinger of what was to lie ahead in the
transformations of the mobile Internet and media. SMS comprised three services:
a message sent from a handset by someone ('mobile originated'), a message
received on a handset by someone ('mobile terminated') and a message sent to
many handsets ('point to multipoint'). This latter service, also newly created
for GSM, was also called 'cell broadcast', a service 'somewhat similar to
teletext on television, where a series of information messages can be sent to
users, based on their location' (Cox 2001: 289).2
Within
the European consortium developing the GSM specifications, Norweнgian engineer
Finn Trosby was entrusted with the responsibility of convening a 'Drafting
Group on Message Handling'. This group produced a draft specification
in November 1978, which set out key
elements of the services, the network architecture, protocols, principles for
routing of messages, and how the dedicated SMS handling service centre would
work (Hillebrand 2001d: 413-14). One of the most important facets of SMS set in
this phase was that SMS would be a store-and-forward service, analogous to
email or the postal service. Also owing to the specifications of the
transmission and priorities accorded to SMS, they could be transmitted to
mobile stations in idle mode or involved in a call' (2001d: 414).
While the work in this period was
crucial and, according to GSM historian Hillebrand, formed the 'basis of the
tremendous success in the market' (Hillebrand 2001d: 414), it is important to
note signal omissions and exclusions. Take, for instance, the possibility of
sending and receiving SMS via not only cell phones but also fixed line phones
too, something that is now being slowly introнduced. Hillebrand laments that:
I tried to interest the ISDN community to work with us
on a compatible SMS service in the ISDN. This would have provided a
standardised access to and from ISDN users. But the initiatives did not fall on
fertile ground. Therefore theа SMSа did not provideа aа
standardа for theа accessа
fromа andа toа
fixed
subscribers. (Hillebrand 2001d: 414)
In contrast the composing and
communication of SMS from an external keyboard and display (such as a computer
screen) was developed in phase two of GSM, and implemented in 1994-5 (Holley
2001: 420). In 1992-3 a number of important 'advanced enhancements to SMS' were
devised and incorporated, such as 'immediate display messages';3 the
use of SMS to allow voicemail messages to be sent to the user; and data storage
improvements (Holley 2001: 420Ч1). The awkwardness and laboriousness of using
keyboards was something that received much attention at about this time, especially
through the introduction of keyнboards with more characters as well as
predictive text-entry systems (Taylor and Vincent 2005:78).
The
salient aspect of SMS is, of course, its famous terseness, both a constraint
but a fabulous spur to communication. Early on, SMS was conceived as having a
maximum message length of 128 octets (an octet is a byte of eight binary digits
usually regarded as an entity) (Hillebrand 2001d: 408). By 1987-8 180 octets
was possible but 160 was agreed upon (2001d: 414). In 1994 the possible length
of a message was extended by allowing long messages to be split across a number
of SMS (called SMS concatenation). This allowed SMS to be, theoretically at
least, up to 255 segments of 150 or so characters', though using this full capability
Would be expensive so smaller groups of messages were thought more likely, as
when Nokia introduced its picture messaging based on SMS concatenation in
1998'аа (Holleyаа 2001:а
421).а Toа createа
furtherа space,аа SMSа
compression was attempted from 1996 onwards. Finally, with the growing
interest in ringtones and other sounds and images over cell phones, SMS was
enhanced so as to deliver these multimedia in a message.
A defining element of digital
textual communication is what languages are able to be represented. This matter
has been widely discussed in relation to the Internet, especially when the
basic code for email, American Standard Code for Information Interchange
(ASCII), held sway (see, for instance, Nolan 2004), and has important implications
for cell phones also. Holley notes that:
the original SMS character was based on the set
proposed for the European paging system . . . supposed to provide for the
majority of European charнacters, including uppercase Greek characters, however
it didn't include several characters needed in Eastern Europe, and even omitted
some Northern Euroнpean characters. Coupling that with the expansion of GSM
into the middle east and far east, it was clear that some major enhancement was
needed. (Holley 2001:421-2)
After much debate in the 1993Ч5
period, the solution adopted was a character set used for Unicode. This way
forward did have its own limitations: 'This character set allows transmission
of the vast majority of characters in the world but of course uses more than
twice the space of the original GSM set' (Holley 2001: 422).
A short but rich reflection upon the
making of SMS is told by Finn Trosby, who was introduced earlier for his key
role in devising the technology. Trosby begins by noting, bathetically, that:
the reason for writing an article on 'the birth of
SMS' is not to reveal a 15 year old story about huge achievements in terms of
complex protocols and chalнlenging combinations of radio, data and network
design . . . The SMS ... is definitely one of the simplest compounds of the GSM
system. (2004: 187).
Rather for Trosby:
SMS is a story about innovation. SMS was indeed a true
newcomer . . . SMS . . . was an extremely simple messaging service tailor-made
for GSM . . . The major part of the GSM community expected the circuit switched
data and fax services to be the most important non-voice services, and SMS to
be more like an add-on that might increase the attraction of the GSM system
without any commercial significance. The years to come proved it to be the
other way round. (2004: 187)
а
Trosby summarises the merits and
flaws of the design - the simplicity and use of available 'in-house'
capabilities of SMS, for instance, versus lack of forethought of envisaging and
designing for future possibilities such as group chat or message templates.
After acknowledging various
individuals for their respective roles in SMS development, he tells a fairytale
as a way to address the '[t]ricky part: what can we learn from the SMS
adventure, if anything at all?':
The story [of SMS] has a slight resemblance to those
of the Norwegian fairy tale character Askeladden, who picks up all kinds of
items that he encounters given the presumption that it may come to use some
day. In the adventure diey always do, resulting in a massive success. (2004:
192)
This bricoleur approach is quite
different from what is possible later on:
Trying to imagine the same situation today, it is not
hard to imagine the average modern executive immediately tearing the SMS
concept . . . into pieces. 'When there is no extensive and convincing text of
market analysis, there should be no further transfer to a lengthy and costly
design and production process.' (2004: 193).
To amplify this point, Trosby
compares SMS with a number of other potential similar technologies:
The strange thing is that if one imagines the modern
product development filtering on all other services than SMS, they might have
passed the checkpoint procedures without difficulties. The speech service was a
banker, no one doubted that there was a substantial potential of migrating
telephony from the fixed to the mobile networks. The fax service also had a
high standing: fax had been a popular service in the fixed networks for years!
The circuit switched data service also had its fixed network parallels that
made perspectives of a high usage probable. Thus, for all three services it
would have been fairly easy to produce convincing arguments in the context of
today's product developнment forums why they should all be profitable. In this
way, we can very well envisage a situation where the methods of today would
have accepted fax and circuit switched data Ч the failures Ч and discarded SMS Ч the
success! (2004: 193)
At
the time in which he writes his history, Trosby is painfully aware of the new,
determining context of telecommunications reforms Ч the 'huge paradigm shift in
the business of telecommunications: leaving the age of monopolies and entering
the age of the liberalised markets' (2004: 194). He contends that 'previous
telcos could afford that luxury' of allowing the technique of a 'hunch':
'Hunch' is what you get when Ч in between the tightly
scheduled tasks of today's demands Ч you are allowed to stray into areas of
terra incognita without almost any other purpose but to explore . . . today's
chatting crowd can be happy that the GSM system definition phase occurred well
within the era of the previous regime. (2004: 194)
Trosby's narrative of SMS is only
one, among many, and it recalls a particular vantage-point of a classic technical
and scientific scene of innovation, in the relatively early phase of SMS
development in the 1987Ч90 period. It is revealing of the creative and
improvisatory thinking and action in which engineers and scientists engage, and
other actors in technology also, but also reminds of the importance of
attending closely to the accounts and actions of such agents.
Finding uses for SMS: Nordic writing
I have recounted in some detail the
originary scene of SMS in a setting that is customary and familiar, namely that
of standards-setting collaborations and institutions, peopled by engineering,
working with each other, and seeking to understand and imagine the uses and
users, and markets, of a new technological system, and implement optimum
solutions. Much of this work though available in the technical literatures has
not been widely acknowledged in, or articulated with, studies of the social
and cultural bearings of the cell phone. To pursue such an object, I wish to
delve at some length into the histories of how users were enlisted, or enrolled
themselves, into text messaging.
At the stage when SMS only had 160
characters, in limited languages and character sets, there were additional
constraints from mostly only having small keys as input devices, and
rudimentary typeface displays on evolving screens. SMS was a store-and-forward
technology, then and still offering poor quality of service or assurances of
receipt of message. Reception permitting, an SMS is sent from a handset to a
dedicated server in the network, and from there is despatched to the intended
receiver. Assuming the receiver's handset is within range, the SMS can be
received relatively quickly, within seconds. If either sender's or receiver's
handset is not in range or turned on, the network is programmed to try again to
send the SMS (for a pre-set duration, typically seven days). All the
reassurance a sender can receive is that the SMS has actually been despatched
from the handset to the network, not, however, that the message has in fact
been successfully received by the addressee.
Two accounts would appear to be
commonly circulated about the first SMS message ever sent. A young Nokia
engineer is credited (according to Agar 2003), or it is thought that the first
message was sent in
sent in December 1992 in the
[I]ts broad-based appeal was initially as a
unidirectional system for sending 'mobile terminated' messages to customers,
such as voice mail notifications. Early SMS campaigns to promote the delivery
as well as receipt of messages, rare as they were, almost exclusively targeted
at business users and positioned the service as a second-rate add-on to voice
transmissions . . . the industry was caught largely off guard by the upsurge in
SMS usage (particularly among young non-professionals). (Taylor and Vincent
2005: 79)
To illustrate the attitude at this
time, Taylor and Vincent quote a 1990 marketing brochure from the then network
of GSM operator suggesting that generally a user would make a voice call to an
operator who would then type in a text message for despatch (2005: 79Ч80) Ч
clearly conceiving SMS on the model of existing paging services. Despite the
limitations, or rather because of the constraints,5 of these human
and non-human factors shaping SMS, what emerged in many countries andа subculturesа
wasаа aа richа
ensembleаа of one-to-one,аа orаа
one-to-many,а text communications.
The first widespread takeup of text
messaging is identified with the Nordic countries, especially Finland ('Nokia
land') as Eija-Lisa Kasesniemi wonderfully documents in her 2003 Mobile
Messages, still the most comprehensive study of text messaging cultures
(and indeed of GSM cultures). In 1995, an interconnect agreement was signed
between the two main mobile operators in
Instead of delivering certain predetermined types of
information, the mesнsages became communication for all and their contents came
to deal with everyday life: 'Your basic, everyday messaging. Boring actually',
said 15-year-old Maaret of her messages. (Kasesniemi 2003: 161)
In 2000, nearly 1
billion text messages were sent in
While some teens retain the most important messages on
their cell phones, others have begun a movement to counter the perishable
quality of text messages. Many teens copy their messages into calendars,
diaries or special notebooks designed for collecting SMS messages. This
practice of message collecting is an important part of text messaging culture. (2002:
178)
As the Finnish example shows, one of
the reasons young people took to texting was a tactic of consolidating and
shaping their own shared culture, in distinction from the general culture
dominated by their parents and other adults. Texting became involved in a wider
reworking of youth culture, involving other new media forms and technologies
and cultural developments. Moreover, as Kasesniemi concludes, 'teenagers have
been the pioneers of text messaging in
'Text capital of the
world'
By 1999Ч2000, text messaging had
been adopted in a number of countries, especially by young people as we have
seen in the cases of pioneering uses in the Nordic countries. Texting quickly
become implicated in the shaping and transformation of gender and sexual
identities and practices. I want to turn now from the European,
'hyper-developed world' (Suchman 2002) to
The cell phone has joined earlier commodities such as
radio and television in most Filipino homes. But the mobile phone has achieved
this level of penetraнtion much faster than was the case for radio and
television . . . Compared to other domestic goods, the mobile phone has enjoyed
the quickest rate of diffusion in Philippine households. Cell phone ownership
is becoming a major index of modernity and the basis for a new form of
inequality. (Pertierra 2005a; see also Pertierra 2002 and 2003)
Although statistics on texting are
difficult to verify, it is often claimed that usage in the Philippines far
outstrips that of other countries, as, for instance, in this representative
statement: 'Presently Filipinos send over 200 million texts daily, about 10
texts per user. This contrasts with Europeans who send about 3 texts daily'
(Pertierra 2005a; cf. Ling 2004).
One of the reasons that texting
became popular in the
With this provision in mind, we can
discern important cultural reasons for the salience of text messaging in the
The
An intriguing feature of texting in
the Philippines is the availability and consumpнtion of text manuals: 'Copious
numbers of text how-to-books are sold in the bookstores . . . "Text to
Text", "Ring Tones and Grafix", "The Lord is my
Text-mate" ' (Elwood-Clayton 200S: 196). These guides on appropriate
language phrasing and diction, as well as how texting is best and properly
used, and how it fits into contemporary manners and mores, are prevalent in a
number of other societies as well, such as China (as Angel Lin's reading of SMS
manuals sold to migrant workers in China has shown, see Lin 2005c) and also
Indonesia (Barendregt 2005).
One of these new areas which texting
is opening up is sexuality:
It is safe to say that texting is contributing
significantly to the public emerнgence of a sexual subject, hitherto limited to
a private discourse [with sexual jokes and messages]. Texting has also expanded
the scope of social relationнships, making it possible to include strangers [as
in the case of using cell phones to flirt and conduct affairs]. (Pertierra et
al. 2002: ch. 7)
Elwood-Clayton has expanded on the
'virtual strangers' theme to show that 'texting was uprooting traditional
courtship, [had] re-integrated matchmaking into society, and had the potential
to subvert traditional gender ideologies in the domain of young love' (2003:
226). Elwood-Clayton's most interesting findings relate to a topic now widely
debated in cell phone culture: technology, gender, and agency. While noting the
strong influence of traditional gendered rules of romance, especially for young
women, she suggests that:
As texting is clandestine by nature, it enables secret
dialogue away from parental eyes and provides a means of expression where young
women do not have to adhere to traditional rules of gender conduct. Texting
provides a site where young woman can choose alternative strategies and
experiment with romantic agency without the stigmatization that is often
associated with sexual proactivity. (2003: 234)
In a latter study Elwood-Clayton
delves into the 'dark side of SMS: hostilities in cyberspaceа among intimates',а something brought about becauseа of the new expectations SMS elicits among its
users 'whereby friends' expectations of each others'аа accessibilityа increases,а
and inа which loversа attempt toа
monitorа one another' (2005: 196).
In particular she argues that 'texting in the Filipino context is often a form
of artillery in personal combats and can, in fact, propel and increase preil
among social actors, at times manifesting in different forms of trouble and/or /symbolic)
violence' (2005: 196Ч7). In light of these patterns of use, she proposes an
addendum to her contemporary urban legend about texting Cinderella:
we could see how easy it would be for one sister to
sabotage Cinderella's chance with the Prince (by perhaps stealing his cell
phone and telling the prince she no longer loved him and to not text him
again). Or perhaps the Prince, after winning his sweet Cinderella, would get
bored and begin initiating anonymous text relationships with other women. (2005:
217)
There is much more to be said about
text messaging in the Philippines, and it will be interesting to see what its
various 'careers' and trajectories become, settling down into patterns
alongside other old and new media and communications. What I wish to turn to
now, however, is the way that text messaging in the Philippines became
synonymous with activism and the use of cell phones for new ways for people to
form groups and organize: in short, the power of the cell phone 'Х to
create new forms of collective activity, whether crowds, mobs, or publics.
Coup d'text
Howard Rheingold's 2002 book Smart
Mobs has been widely discussed for its vision of social revolution and new
technologies. Rheingold sees text messaging as the harbinger of such new,
powerful forms of collectivity, studying emergent uses around the world.
Significantly the chapter of his book devoted to 'Smart mobs: the power of the
mobile many' opens with a recounting of the celebrated overнthrow of President
Joseph Estrada of the
President Joseph Estrada of the
Rheingold is careful to emphasise
the social as much as technical nature of this revolution, yet still sees such
developments, if rather ineffably, as leading to 'smart mobs':
Smart mobs are an unpredictable but at least partially
describable emergent property that I see surfacing as more people use mobile
telephone, more chips communicate with each other, more computers know where
they are located, more technology becomes wearable, more people start using
these new media to invent new forms of sex, commerce, entertainment communion,
and, as always, conflict. (2002: 182)
As his earlier, prescient book Virtual
Community (Rheingold 1993) did for the Internet, so Smart Mobs has
compellingly fused and circulated a set of ideas about cell phones and their
successor pervasive, wearable and mobile technologies, something I will touch
upon in my discussion of moblogging in chapter 8. For the present, I wish to
return to the matter of mobs and messaging in the
It is commonly assumed that the mobile phone plaved a
crucial role in EDSA2. Even its main victim, ex-President Joseph Estrada, seems
to agree . . . What better imprimatur could one obtain for the importance of
the cellphone Ч via text messaging and voice calls Ч in People Power 2? (Pertierra
et al. 2002: ch. 6)
The text-toppling of Estrada is
typically attributed to 'Generation Txt' Ч
to the pivotal role played by text messaging and the
new social category which marks it (apparently Generation Txt was 'first used
as an advertising gimmick by cell phone providers to attract young users to
their products'; see Rafael 2003: 407ff). The most detailed important study of
text messaging and subjectivity in the
It focuses squarely on the mobile phone, and ignores
the people who used it.
Moreover it strips the Filipinos who struggled against
the Estrada governнment of their agency and gives it to the cellphone. Thus the
technology is said to possess a mysterious force, called 'Text Power' ... it is
the technology that does things Ч makes things happen Ч not the people who use
it. (Pertierra et al. 2002: ch. 6)
The rhetoric of the technological
sublime reappears a year late in an advertiseнment for the company Smart
Communications, featuring an image of a cell phone screen with the assembled
crowd during the crisis, under the caption 'Congratulaнtions to the Filipino
people for spreading and heeding the cry for truth!' (2002: ch. 6). Given the
recrudescence of the technological sublime in digital media (on which see
Bailey 200S; Mosco 2004; Nye 1994; Tabbi 1995), the detailed examinнation of
precise details and forms of agency and co-ordination using cell phones is most
instructive. Pertierra et al. find, for instance, that
the cell phone did play an important role in EDSA2
[that is, the downfall of Estrada]. That role, however, was not the one for
which it has usually been praised in the media since the event Ч namely, that
of crowd-drawer par excellence . . . less than half of our survey respondents
who took part in People Power 2 noted that text messaging influenced them to
go. If people did attend, it was because they were persuaded to by an ensemble
of other reasons. (2002: ch. 6)
The significance of the cell phone
in the demonstrations lay elsewhere:
firstly, in the way it helped join people who
disapproved of Pres. Estrada in a network of complex connectivity . . .
Secondly, the mobile phone was instrumental as an organizational device ... In
the hands of activists and powerbrokers from politics, the military, business
groups and civil society, the mobile phone become a 'potent communications
tool'. (Pertierra et al. 2002:
ch. 6)
Precision
is needed here, as Pertierra et al. convincingly demonstrate, to delineate the
ways in which text messaging plays a role in activism. It is also useful to
step back from the celebratory discourse on the cell phone and its powerful
effects, and reframe this set of events as very much to do with the mutual
construction of society and technology, in which culture is intimately
involved. This involves placing both the technology of text messaging and the
social and political forces manifested in this uprising in a much wider
setting. For instance, in his account of the Estrada crisis Vicente L. Rafael
terms the tropes of text messaging and activism evident in the discourses
surrounding it as:
a set of telecommunicative fantasies among
middle-class Filipinos . . . [that] reveal certain pervasive beliefs of the
middle classes ... in the power of communication technologies to transmit
messages at a distance and in their own ability to possess that power. In the
same vein, they believed they could master their relationship to the masses of
people with whom they regularly shared
For Rafael, rather than possessing
intrinsic politics in its own right, text mesнsaging here is about a 'media
politics (understood in both senses of the phrase: the politics of media
systems, but also the inescapable mediation of the political) [that 1 reveal
the unstable workings of Filipino middle-class sentiments. Unsettling in their
relationship to social hierarchy, these sentiments at times redrew class diviнsions,
anticipated their abolition, or called for their reinstatement and consolidaнtion'
(2003: 400). Thus Rafael compares the strong claims for the cell phone with
earlier proto-nationalist fantasies associated with the telegraph and telephone
by the colonial bourgeoisie in the late nineteenth century: 'They imagined that
these new technologies would afford them access to colonial leaders, enabling
them to hear and be heard directly by the state' (2003: 400). Here we see once
again the importance of how technology, its attributes, contexts, and uses are
imagined, something also prevalent in my next case study of the development of
text messaging.
Pagers, text messages and mobile e-mail in Japan
This function changed the pager from a medium limited
to receiving calls from one specific individual or location to one that could
respond to calls from various sources such as the office, home, and friends.
With this change, the pager was extended into private and personal uses outside
of the office setting. (2005:44)
This 'personalization' of pagers
grew especially in the early 1990s as cell phones were becoming more popular
and subscription charges became cheaper (also in |993, subscription deposits
were lowered). Younger people than before began using pagers, particularly
female school and college-age students. By the mid-1990s users in their teens
and twenties were predominantly the new subscribers to pager services. In 1995
Tokyo Telemessage released the Mola, a new pager that could receive text
messages, which 'dramatically expanded youth pager uptake young users began
using the pager to exchange short messages in which words were assigned to
sequences of numbers and codes' (Okada 2005: 44, 51). In the same year, users
were able to buy rather than just rent the pager terminal. By mid-1996 there
was a peak of almost 11 million subscribers, a quarter of these being 20 to
29-year-olds, and 35.2 per cent households with children between the ages of 15
and 19 (2005: 44).
The juvenation of pagers is a
fascinating study in the sociotechnical interaction among companies,
manufacturers, and users. The pager 'allowed girls to receive messages from
various partners, and a new form of dialogue was constructed through the
repeated exchange of pager messages' (2005: 44). As Okada explains:
The method of communication popular among high school
girls during that period is called poke-kotoba (pager lingo), which
translates a specific sequence of numbers into specific words, generally using
the first syllable of the name of a number as the 'reading' of the number. For
example, 0840 is ohayo (good morning), and 724106 is nanishiteru (what
are you doing?). The pager, which was designed as a medium to simply request a
return call, evolved into a medium of interactive text communication via these
girls' using the telephone keyboard for sending out messages. (2005: 51)
Pager manufacturers noted and
responded to these communication practices, by adding a new function:
that converted numbers into phonetic symbols. For
instance, 11 became the symbol for a, and 21 became the symbol for ka.
Until then, in order to translate poke-kotoba, the users needed a
common reference or understanding to decode the digital sequences. With this
new function, they were able to send messages that were readable by anybody. (2005:51)
Keitai
short message services were a response by
the mobile carriers to the success of pagers. In April 1996 DDI Cellular Group
launched the Cellular Text Service. This was followed by similar services by
IDO and NTT DoCoMo (Short Mail), also by a text-messaging service for the
personal handy phone, Cellular Moji Service,а
introduced by DDIа Pocketа (Okadaа
2005:аа 53;а Matsudaа
2005a:аа 35).
Matsuda notes, 'this type of.service
. . . has come to be called, collectively, short message. At the time, it was
not possible to send messages between keitai subнscribed to different
service providers, and each provider had a unique service name' (Matsuda 2005a:
35).
These short messaging services were
displaced, if not eclipsed, by J-Phone's introduction of SMS in October 1997
(Funk 2001: 22; Matsuda 2005a: 35). J-Phone was then the third-largest service
provider in
The Japanese love of text messaging
has been widely noted, and typically claimed as 'one of the distinctive
features of Japanese youths' keitai use' (Okada 2005: 49). Some
researchers, such as Okada,.have gone so far as to suggest the Japanese case
may be unique:
As researchers in other countries have noted, the
heavy use of mobile mesнsaging among youth is common in countries with
widespread mobile phone adoption . . . However, the Japanese case is somewhat
unique in that text messages far outpace voice calls for young people. (2005:49)
What emerged eventually, however,
was the popularity of keitai Internet email over SMS:
Japanese users gradually chose this type of e-mail
over short messages because it is cross-platform and allows for longer
messages. From a user perspective, however, there is little difference between
text messages sent as short mesнsages and those sent as Internet e-mail. Users
refer to both as meiru (mail). (Matsuda 2005a: 35)
Such keitai email supports
relatively long messages of between 250 and 3000 characters and can also carry
graphics, video, audio, and web links (2005a: 35). The attraction of keitai email
was early on secured by its close link with simple but attractive forms of
mobile content, distinguishing it not only from SMS but also from fixed line
email:
e-mail is a very important part of the services
offered by mobile content providers. For example, screen savers, which
typically include various carнtoon characters, are sent in e-mail. With more
than 2.5 million subscribers [in 2001] for this kind of official service, there
are more than 2.5 million of these e-mails sent every morning from the content
providers to their subнscribers. Further, there are many entertainment services
that enable users to add these cartoon characters along with photos, ringing
tones, and, in the future, video clips to their e-mail. (Funk 2001: 35)
I will talk more about keitai mobile
email, and the mobile Internet more generally, in chapter 9, but it is worth
noting here that Matsuda emphasises that just 'as in Norway . . . and Finland .
. . the user demographic that most commonly uses mobile e-mail is young and
female' (2005b: 125).
Slow moving message:
There is much else to say about the
domestication of SMS, and what I have described so far leaves out many
important perspectives and alternative stories. Part of this work to be
undertaken, I suspect, entails consideration of cases where SMS has not been so
popular, has not been used or enlisted users. Haddon has pointed to the need to
understand non-users, former users, and intermittent users, to appreciate how
such indifference, forgetting, reluctance, or foreswearing shapes notions of
uses and meanings of information and communications techнnologies themselves.
Though it is not often talked about, and does not seize the public imagination,
text messaging is not always a story of frenzied adoption.
In some places and among many
groups, SMS has been relatively slow to gain users. One very large and
important market often cited is the
In the
This
is a reasonable starting point, though, as we have seen, pagers were an
important precursor to SMS in
explains the success of SMS as
enabled by a circumvention of corporate telecommunications carrier culture:
NNT bypassed its corporate culture by creating DoCoMo
and hiring outsid Mariа Matsunaga.ааа Scandinavianааа andааа
Philippineааа populationsааа surprised unsuspecting telecommunications
operators by embracing SMS. The Euro pean and Asian adoption of SMS was made
possible in large part by pricing policies that made texting less expensive
than voice calls.
Rheingold also considers the
question of why the
Hip-hop culture, streetwise and fashion-conscious fans
of rap music, favor Motorola's two-way pagers, while young stockbrokers, suits,
and geeks in the information technology industry favour the BlackBerry wireless
pagers from Research in Motion. If the adoption barriers of incompatible
technical standards and high prices for texting services disappear, might the
cultural practices now incubating in these subcultures reach a tipping point
and set off a mainstream fashion epidemic? (2002: 23)
There is much more to be said about
messaging in the USA; however, the case I will turn to now brings into view one
of the most mobile connected societies in the world, Hong Kong Ч often seen as
a gateway to the booming Asian mobile markets.
There are a number of reasons
adduced for
Hong Kong mobiles scholar John Ure
notes that' [consumption] patterns as well consumer adoption rates of [SMS]
would seem to be influenced by both local cultural factors and local market
conditions, such as the level and structure of rices' (Ure 2003b: 10). For
instance, voice calls on cell phones in
Worried about this, cell phone
companies have tried various ways to create demand for text messaging services.
An early service devised to attract young users by leading cell phone company
CSL was 'I-DATE-U', an interactive scenario game based on four female
characters. Claimed to be 'the first-ever virtual dating game on mobile
phones', the game could run on basic SMS or via the 2.SG WAP (wireless access
protocol)/GPRS (general packet radio service) technology. Users (presumably
male) could ask questions and engage in conversation via text with characters
(McKenzie 2001). Another service introduced to stimulate take-up was canned
messages' (e.g. 'happy birthday'), prepared in Chinese, to save keying time.
Another popular group of text services are text subscription and transaction
services. For instance, Peoples Mobiles offered a mobile betting service,
allowing customers to place bets on football and horse racing. M-commerce, such
as payment by mobile (m-payment), has also been seen as a way of increasing
revenue (Ramos 2003).
These
commercial responses to use of SMS in
I have only briefly touched here on
the social and cultural aspects of SMS, MMS, and other 2.5G and 3G mobile data
services in
universally regarded as a 'success',
or that it has a particular trajectory. A history of text messaging needs to
include and account for this case, not just for comprehensiveness, but also
because it stands to tell us something about the shaping of this technology.
Clearly the story of SMS is a more complex one internationally than commonly
understood, and tracing the nuances of this is instructive for reminding us of
the cultural specificity of theory too.
The 'success' of SMS
There is an assumption in the
celebration or reviling, by turns, of text messaging, that it has been now
proven a 'success'. Making such judgements about technolнogy, or anything in
history, is extremely problematic of course Ч not least given this is a quite
new phenomenon. Further, as I have suggested above, the rise of SMS (or
resistance to it, or simply lack of interest) is variable across cultures.
The difficulties of declaring one
technology a 'success' and another a 'failure', or indeed, at a deeper level,
of drawing neat boundaries around technologies, is nicely adumbrated in a
classic opus of actor-network theory, Latour's 1996 Aramis. In Aramis,
Latour offers a comprehensive account of a technology that was a 'failure'
rather than a 'success': a French automated train system known as Aramis
commenced in 1969 and was finally abandoned in 1987. By contrast, SMS may
appear to be a case Ч at least so far, and in some places Ч of a technology
that has drawn many elements into an alliance, and has succeeded (Latour 1996:
106). There is much to be added about the human and non-human elements enlisted
in SMS, especially during the 1990s (not least the 160 character set of SMS as
an actor in its own right). And the future is open, as to whether SMS will
decompose.
In the light of Latour's work it is
instructive to compare SMS with another technology that has, for some years at
least, been judged a failure, namely Wireнless Access Protocol. Discussed at
length in chapter 8, WAP was an early attempt to capitalise on the take-up of
the Internet, especially with the advent of the World Wide Web and graphic
user-interfaces for the IBM-PC platform. It was widely regarded as a flop.
However, with improved resolution of cell phones, a greater range of screen
sizes, faster speeds, and a substantial base of users with WAP-enabled ph ones,
the technology is now slowly becoming popular Ч and so offers an opportunity to
see the reamination of this technology. Indeed WAP resembles Latour's Aramis,
and what he calls the linear model of innovation, where the 'initial idea
emerges fully armed from the head of Zeus. Then, either because its brilliant
inventor gives it a boost, or because it was endowed from the start with
automatic and autonomous power, it sets out to spread across the World. But the
world doesn't always take it in' (Latour 1996: 118).
SMS, on the other hand, or thumb,
seems to fit the translation or whirlwind model of innovation:
the initial idea barely counts. It's a gadget, a
whatchamacallit, a weakling at best, unreal in principle, ill-conceived from
birth, constitutionally ineffective . . . the initial gadget is not endowed
with autonomous power, nor is it-boosted into the world by a brilliant inventor
. . . the initial gadget moves only if it interests one group or another, and
it is impossible to tell whether these groups have petty interests or broad
ones, whether they are open or resolutely closed to technological progress.
They are what they are, and thev want what they want . . . every time a new
group becomes interested in the project, it transforms the project. (1996: 119)
Of course, this distinction between
the two models of technology innovation, and WAP and SMS, is too neat in
itself. The symmetry will be well muddied if we add the case of the Japanese
technologies of text messaging and mobile email famously the i-mode system,
discussed in chapter 9.
In
emphasising the contingent and even potentially open-ended nature of techнnology,
and also its simultaneously and co-operatively produced boundaries with the
social, I reach similar conclusions to Alex Taylor and Jane Vincent in their
SMS history, also inspired by actor-network theory. They set out to 'reveal
that no simple path can be drawn to explain the developments in and uptake of
technologies' (200S: 75), indicating the many and heterogeneous entities that
have combined to bring what we understand as SMS about. This shows that the
history of SMS, like any other technology, cannot be simply repeated Ч for
instance, as a moral underwriting of the guaranteed, widespread, and lucrative
take-up of MMS. In chapter 5 I will consider another case study in how the
uncertain and serendipitous logics but also power relations of consumption have
shaped cell phone culture Ч the less-known but equally significant case of
disability and accessibility.
My starting point in this book has
been to consider the cell phone and mobile technologies from a cultural
standpoint. For those routinely engaged in cultural research, theory, and
studies, the desire to embark upon such a study may be relatively
uncontentious, and the resulting process or product hopefully a more-or-less
useful contribution to knowledge. For many others, however, the very notion of
cell phone or mobile culture is still something odd, a contradiction in terms,
or simply indulgent. There is a very strong sense that cell phone culture, as a
species of popular culture, is very much regarded as low, vulgar culture of the
multitudes. While the fact is that it has instrumental uses and meets certain
needs, it threatens rather than complements, extends, reconfigures or replaces
proper, high culture (actually middlebrow culture, really). There is an
important role here for cultural studies, as with sociology, anthropology, and
other disciplines, to reclaim the sense of rich wonder and importance of the
ways that people do make meaning in their everyday lives, and to make sense of
how cell phone culture fits into the broad culture field and its relations to
the social.
When I received a government grant
to research this topic, the award |was welcomed by many academic,
non-government organisation and industry colleagues, but was attacked by a
prominent conservative commentator as a scandalous waste of money. I was happy
enough to shrug off this cheap shot, not least because it was prompted by
something of a set-piece, the annual
'find-the-looniest-arts-research-grant-to-pillory' hunt by the tabloid paper in
my city. As it turned out, however, the attack on the idea of taking cell phone
culture seriously was part of what became a larger and far more serious attack
on humaniнties research generally Ч a sustained assault taken seriously by the
Minister responsible for university research funding raising genuine questions
about academic independence and scholarly standards. Now I tell this story not
princiнpally to even the score (though there's that too) but to tease out a
strange, persistent contradiction about how the cultural dimension of
information and communications technologies Ч particularly mobile technologies
Ч is regarded. On the one hand, cell phones, Internet, and other new digital
technologies are prized because of the possibilities for economic development
and wealth creation they bring. After all, these are produced by some of the
biggest industries on the planet, numbering among them the largest global
corporations, and potentially making huge contributions to civil society and
polity as well as the economic well-being of individuals and nations. It would
be logical to think that research into such technologies would be welcomed and
encouraged. On the other hand, social and cultural approaches to information
and communications technologies are often not desired or supported. This is
despite the fact that society's underнstanding of the most pressing economic,
not to mention philosophical or ethical issues, in information and
communications technologies Ч trust, privacy, conнsumer expectations and
desires, what content is attractive, cultures of use -would benefit from
intensive investigation and wide debate of their cultural dimensions.
I am reminded here of a meeting with
a well-informed telecommunications analyst for a major stockbroking firm and
discussing consumer take-up of mobile services. We shared great curiosity and
interest in telecommunications, but mutual incomprehension also. There was a
yawning gulf between his emphasis on price as the prime, if not overriding,
reason consumers might adopt or ignore certain services, and my interest in how
cultural and social concerns motivated their purchasing choices, what they used
the technology for, and what it meant to them in particular situations. In
response to such talking past one another that is well entrenched and
institutionalised in mobile technologies, an aim of this study has been to try
to find ways to connect the different facets of cell phone culture, knitting
together the different sides of this phenomenon as revealed by the work of
arenas often regarded as separate or at least not often crossing. In this
spirit 1 wish to conclude with some thoughts about what I hold significant for
cell phone culture and mobile media's present and futures, and for those who
inhabit them (willingly or otherwise), take an interest in them, or study them.
Speaking of mobiles
In the course of this book, I have
discussed various conceptions and representaнtions about cell phones and mobile
technologies, that have certainly shaped cell phone culture, and are widely and
passionately held. The most striking of these are those that fall under the
label of moral panics, but there are many others I have not touched upon that
often recur Ч such as the addictiveness cell phones engender. There is
certainly a Manichean view held by many of the ills versus the wonders of such
technology, with little middle ground. It underscores that there are very deep,
structuring myths about technology that are not going to go away anytime soon.
The much discredited, yet hydra-headed notion of technological determinism is
very much alive here, as we see in the idea that the cell phone has theа 'good' power to increase dramatically our
productivity and social capital, become our life-recorder, or help us
powerfully organise a rally. The flip-sideа
of this is the belief that mobile technologies are powerfully 'bad',
inciting usаа to riot, affray, excessive
sociability or solipsism, or crimes against grammar or cultural values.
Scholars and critics by virtue of
our professions have a reflex response to paint in shades of grey, add
tonality, and plead that things are not so simple. However, ааthere are important concerns at stake here,
that I for one am curious to find better аmethods to promote genuine public debate and
consideration. There are, for instance, important ethical issues regarding the
appropriate use of communication аdevices
Ч take the case of the vast data- and image-capturing capabilities now аааmade possible with camera, smart-phones, and
other mobile media devices. In theа
emerging ideas, uses, and cultural practices associated with these, in
the case of moblogging for instance, there are visions of recording,
annotating, and sharing all sorts of personal and collective information. The
debate regarding camera phones has been waylaid to a great extent by fears they
will be used to take photos of vulnerableа
children for nefarious purposes.а
This has obscured much-needed, wide, and thoroughgoing debate about if
or how we should regulate mobile imaging.
Where discussions of the social and
cultural implications of mobile media are occurring, the principles in these
are often proceeding unaware of the actual and аdeveloping cultures of use of such devices. A
controversial example is the case of erotica and pornography ('adult' content
or entertainment) over mobile media devices. We know from studies of Internet
use that a wide cross-section of people consume pornography and do not believe
it is harmful; yet this sort of understandнing of patterns of consumption and
beliefs of users is not entering the policy and regulatory arena. Rather,
decisions shaping key aspects of mobile technologies are predicated on
long-held and problematic assumptions about public attitudes, and also on the
nervousness of the larger corporations offering mobile services that are keen
to avoid taking risks and incurring 'brand damage' as a result. There is a
traditional and very useful role that those studying and analysing social and аcultural aspects of mobile media can play, and
that is to communicate their knowledge and perspectives to inform and open up
spaces for discussion.
Mobile designs
The importance of design has been
manifest in cell phone culture, all the more critically perhaps because these
communication devices have become not only mediators of much conversation and
exchange but also bearers of many meanings, to do with identity, fashion,
belonging, and the symbols and images that mark out collective and overarching
aspects of our cultures. Design is a meeting place for ideas and practices to
do with aesthetic considerations, functionality, economics, and signs, as well
as engineering and marketing. Design is also the hinge between production and
consumption; it is a space of translation between desires of those building and
offering the technology, and those who might possibly find themselves drawn to,
reflecting, using, or having such things.
Given the near chaotic, teeming
field of possible shapes and directions that cell phones and mobile
technologies might take, the turns they might make th connections between
design and cultural reflection will become all the thicker and need to do so.
It is no surprise that there is a lively, dense literature and bodv of practice
on design in mobiles, and that there is much more to do still to keen open
design as a site of potentiality in which all sorts of visions of use and consumption
can be inscribed.
The user is dead, long live the user
In contemporary study and theory of
the cell phone and mobile media, but also in corporate and management practice
and philosophy, we encounter time and time again the fetish of the user. The invocation
of the user is a much-needed exhortнation to those deeply involved in
commercial enterprise, doctrinally guided by shareholder value and management
imperatives; a reminder that the meaning of technology is not in the gift of
industry, ultimately. Rather technology needs to be received, completed,
supplemented and found wanting, by the user.
The question of what the user wants
is, like all such ponderings of desire, an interrogative that cannot be
answered straightforwardly. Certainly the various representatives of the user
need to be proliferated as much as possible, and inserted in the interstices of
the production process. There are processes, strucнtures, and techniques that
are tried and tested to consult with, involve, join, employ, partner with, and
be directed by users Ч and these are not used enough.
There are deeper questions, however,
about what the rhetoric of the user signifies. The full implications of
conceptualising the user-as-producer are only now being registered. The
achievements of productive, creative users in their active, everyday
appropriation and domestication of technology have not been registered in the
annals of mobile technology, yet do we really need such documentation and
reckoning. Among other things, such diverse cultural histories and accounts of
use and consumption are needed to articulate better into multilayered
mediascapes and flows of mobile culture in the present conjuncture. With the
new technologies and cultural forms shaping the intersection of cell phones, audio
and visual cultures, and Internet cultures Ч from customisation of devices, to
everyday image recording, through moblogging, to peer-to-peer networks, email
and messaging, and web cultures Ч mobile media networks, like the Internet,
offer support, indeed clamour, for the user.
Media politics
The coming into being of mobile
media is the next phase of what convergence has entailed: a long, complicated,
unpredictable transformation of media and the cultural realm, since at least
the early 1980s. The lessons from the 'information superhighway' talk of the
early to mid 1990s and then the dot.com and telco crash later in that decade concerned the sheer massive scale
of media changes, the twists and turns these could take, and yet also the
intimate implications of all these in the conduct and bounds of daily life.
Though much has been brought together, sorted out, compared, harmonised, or
left as it is across media industries, I think that internationally we all are
still in the process of comprehending how the distinct forms of, say,
television and radio broadcasting, newspapers and magazines, cinнema and music,
Internet and telecommunications, computers and mobile techнnologies will go
together. Hence, under the banner of mobile media, there are already and will
continue to be crucial struggles over pivotal issues such as: what cultural
forms will survive and be supported; how audiences will be imagined and served;
how the new publics will be understood; in whose interest will policies be
arbitrated; and, crucially, who will be involved in these arenas and decisions that
will shape mobile media.
One of the pressing concerns goes
directly to questions of cultural citizenship and democracy because, while the
user is still much talked about, very few users are taken notice of, let alone
involved, in media organisations or institutions, government or regulatory
policymaking. Indeed the large and powerful mobile companies naturally work
hard in the interests of their own shareholders to shape the outcomes they
believe are favourable, and Ч though it varies across jurisdicнtions, depending
on the democratic traditions of national or regional systems of governance Ч
show little inclination to consult genuinely or share critical decisions
over technology shaping and policy with citizens or household customers.
There
is much hope vested in a new, shifting dynamic between production and
consumption, where the balance is tipping, unpredictably and excitingly, in
favour of the latter. Much more attention has been paid by scholars and by
marketers over the past decade or more to the consumer (the relative of the
user). What this has shown, as in the cases of text messaging or the innovation
of disability culнtures, is that consumers, through the accretion of their
accidental, everyday innovнations, do have considerable power to shape
technologies. Further, new media technologies, forms, and cultures rely on the
consumer in ways that were not possible, or required before; quite a number of
the convergent mobile media technologies, such as smart phones, moblogging, or
mobile Internet, rely on very active, informed, and knowledgeable consumers.
There has been a groundswell of optimistic, even millenarian rhetoric about
this new agency. Indeed, the assertive noisiness of individual consumers should
be celebrated, but it remains unclear how multitudes of users will come
together to steer change in their own interests.
Open mobile
A pressing question regarding the
future of cell phones as they metamorphise irrevocablyа intoаа
mobileа mediaа revolvesаа
aroundа openness,аа somethingа
_ straightforwardly, not unproblematically Ч that is critical to the
exercise of cul tural agency. If mobile media technologies and platforms are
becoming integral our culture, how do we ensure that all voices, identities,
and people may avail themselves of these conduits and means of cultural
production, consumption and exchange, should they wish to do so? These
considerations have become more complex, intractable, and hotly debated as
traditional media forms have trans formed over the past two decades, so I am
not overly sanguine about how we can also find some consensus around equality,
access, diversity, and cultural maintenance and expression when grappling with
new media cultures.
I suppose that I reflect upon the
inheritance of almost a century of telecomнmunications, and die accepted forms
of governance that accumulated around these in which each nation was paramount
(true, with a few clearly establishing their colonial and imperial reach into
telegraph and telephone, and dominating the others), and structures of
international co-ordination and co-operation were established. The national
telecommunications carrier played a pre-eminent role in serving the user,
employing the worker, building the industry, and providing universal service
across the country's territory. There are different sorts of teleнcommunications
culture, but the 'telco' culture I have mentioned in the course of this book
relates to the way that telecommunications came to be regarded during its
classic, PTT admin phase, with its apogee in the deliberate, well-documented,
carefully organised technical yet intense political decision making of the
Interнnational Telecommunications Union. The first such international body, and
a forerunner to the United Nations, such telecommunications fora structured the
participation of citizens through the putative representation of the technical
and administrative personnel of the government agencies (or private monopolies
in the case of the USA and to some extent Canada) that were responsible for
delivering services to what were then termed subscribers.
With competitive markets established
in most jurisdictions, the setting of international rules on
telecommunications' place in free (though clearly not fair) trade in goods and
services, and the widespread privatisation of former monopoly network
operators, a new vision for telecommunications has not really emerged. And
given that the cell phone came on the scene, certainly in its accelerating
diffusion, from the mid-1980s onwards, as a creation of more-or-less
competitive markets, the older heritage of telecommunications, crumbling as it
was, has not offered a cultural or political rationale. Yet there are real
issues to be confronted, for instance, if cultural material is to be carried
via SMS/MMS, who decides what content is appropriate and what is not? How is
access of cultural producers to networks to be safeguarded, against the
countervailing property rights of network operators who feel they are entitled
to a return on their investment? How open ire mobile media platforms to
carrying different applications, or allowing differнent software or
applications, or permitting devices to be modified for the users own
preferences or purposes? Should WAP, i-mode, portals (or other 'walled
gardens'), and other online mobile protocols and configurations allow the user
freedoms like the public Internet, or indeed to access the Internet, or content
be freely available over television or radio sets?
I am now veering, of course, into
thinking about the politics of mobile code and technologies from the
perspective of computers, Internet, and other digital culнture, to see what
resources could be suitable for developing notions of how mobile media can be
kept open for cultural activity. For instance, there is the idea i>f
creative or open commons, much discussed and inspiring different, concrete and
viable models for democratic, economically sustainable cultural exchange (as
represented in the 'Creative Commons' licence, for instance). In 200S, discusнsion
was beginning about the notion of a 'mobile commons', and while this holds
promise it will need considerable elaboration to make compelling sense of the
way that mobile media are developing.
In
pondering all this, I am keenly aware that cell phone culture is certainly now
a far larger, more radically diverse, collection of meanings, practices, and
techнnologies than it was in the 1980s, the first decade when such telephony
became commercial and publicly available. There are many ways to map the
vectors of the development of mobile technologies, but schematically at least
it is a movement from voice telephony to media broadly conceived. As is evident
from my account, there is much we do not know or understand about the pre- and
early history of the cell phone, and much work to do here. The additional
challenge we face now, however, and one I certainly felt in writing this book
in the midst of a technology infiltrating into and reworking all sorts of old
and media forms, is the need to bring together a broad knowledge of
communications, cultural and media history and theory to follow the cell
phone's metamorphosis into media par excellence. Not only to follow,
however, but also to participate actively and knowingly in the opening up and
shaping of such media and technology.