What are Temporal and Spatial Meditations of the Mobile Phone - Essay Example

Name : Subject : Prof : Date : What are Temporal and Spatial mediations of the mobile phone: How does the logic of the network and of network sociality influence these? Introduction Mobile phones these days are the most pervasive type of communication network and from the sociological view it is a broad, ever-present, versatile wearable computer. It is portable device which you can use like a wired telephone allowing connection to any kind of public communication device using a mixture of radio wave and typical telephone circuit switching. The idea of mobile communication was believed to originate from Sweden’s police radio phone but the first real mobile phone was developed by Martin Cooper of Motorola in New York in 1973 (Corino, 2004:20). After a decade, the first generation of cellular phones were introduced to the public and in the 1990’s second generation (2G) phones with GSM capability were released. Since then mobile phones has become nearly universal in most countries in Australia, Asia, and Europe. You will find people in all walks of life using one including children. No matter what your business is, mobile phones are very handy. The mobile phone has become a symbol of contemporary mobility, a new way of life and an instrument of change. The temporal and spatial mediations of mobile phones appear to change the working habits of our people particularly those who belong to the social networking group. What are these mediations? How was it influenced by network sociality? Mobility and Mobile Phones Mobility according to Wittel (2001:68) is significant since people nowadays are increasingly active and always on the move. The integration of technical devices such as mobile phones into our customary face to face interaction is becoming more and more evident. You will seldom find business transactions without a mobile phone ringing and long distance calls being made simultaneously with face to face talks. This is a clear indication that technology mediated communication is now part of our daily routines and working hand in hand with the usual physical interaction. The kind of modernity that mobile phone brings to our social life has drastically transforms the relationship between time and space (Rettie 2005:17) because not so long ago the distance between locations is relative to the time it takes to move from one place to another. Mobile communications eliminates distance and the delays of time thus making the future happens more quickly. Modern communication technology greatly affects our way of life because it opposed the linear concept of time and liberates people from the restraint of place. Mobile phones positively affect the productivity of an individual by allowing them to conserve time and consequently do more work than usual. They improved time management thus creating more opportunities for interaction and increase availability for better task sequencing resulting to quality time spent for their families. With increased mobility, mobile phones eliminate the need for a person to stay by a wire phone consequently reducing the element of place in their normal schedules (Rettie 2005:18). Space and Place The distinction between space and place varies since there are mediated places that do not exist in geographical space such as online environments that enables interaction without being physical present in the same place. This means interaction happen in space and not in a place. Mobile phones create a spatio-temporal effect to the use of time and place by redistributing presence in people’s simultaneous interactions. A person using a mobile communication appears to be virtually present in two places at the same time. Some researchers believed that being in two different places at the same time is awkward and the distinction of space and place should be explained further. To steer clear of more complications, the distinction can be simply explained by a phone conversation remotely and simultaneously happening in two different physical places where both participants are being heard in their respective location. The shared space is the common place in space where these participants interact. It is now clear that there are actually three places involved; both participants’ physical locations along with the phone space (Rettie 2005:20). The Issue of Presence and Embodiment Presence in the phone space is a situation where a person perceives that he is actually present in a particular environment. When a person talks to someone on the phone, he is actually in his own private space with limited for other social interactions. He is physical present but his attention is focused on someone who is not actually present. Furthermore, people on the phone feels they are actually together and sharing the same space. The form of a person’s presence is conditionally on the nature of the mediated place where it is argued that there cannot be presence without a place. There is presence in mobile phones since there is a communicative place (Rettie 2005:21) sharing without a sense of material location. The taught of being there or embodiment gives a sense of presence in mobile phone communication. The interaction which are reactive and action dependent gives a feeling of embodiment similar to a face-to-face interaction where we recognize people’s intent in pause, facial expressions and other body language. Previous research on conversation analysis shows phone conversations are indeed influenced by slight changes in voice intonation that are also directly perceived by participants. These changes in voice patterns enable conversational opportunities such as cues to introduce a different topic or to start taking turns discussing their personal views of an issue. This kind of situation represents a new holistic perspective that the mind, body, and the environment are working together as a single system, However, the concept of presence in a virtual environment disagrees with the concept of presence in the physical environment where a person’s virtual presence is just a mere illusion. On the other hand, except in the most intense conditions, virtual presence in a mediated phone conversation still leaves a certain amount of awareness of the physical environment and therefore being in another “make believe” environment is not an illusion. The body which we use to see the virtual environment essentially plays a vital function in the creation of virtual reality experience and being in a virtual environment doesn’t necessarily mean being entirely disconnected from the physical senses. The fact that the physical body is not located in the phone space limits a person’s complete presence and embodiment (Rettie 2005:26). Features of Network Sociality The mobile phones mobility intensifies the effects of phone communication in our way of life by altering the use of time and the relevance of place. It enhances the incidence of simultaneous interactions and enables presence similar to face-to-face interaction. This electronic mediated communications produced social implications and one of them is the notion of virtual community. Some social scholars seeing the rise of a contemporary society says it is practically replacing the real community and we are loosing the real sense of social commons. However, Wittel (2001:62) believes that these arguments are only based on “utopian and techno-deterministic perspective” (62) and the concept of virtual communities is not the right path in recognizing the current transformations of social relations. Furthermore, the views presented by sociologist are pure futuristic pretensions and some are rather conformist and reflective. Community by definition are constructed and shares a common physical territory, history, values, and common religion. The notion that the virtual and real world is far different from each other is misleading and creates a sense of double reality. Wittel (2005) arguments suggest no separation between virtual and the real world but insist that there are basic disparity between online and traditional face-to-face reality. There are many questions involving social change and transformation of the way people work under an environment full of flexibility and probabilities such as keeping a long-term and trustful relationships and maintaining traditional routines. The disintegration of once a strong connection between communities and social life seems believable and maybe termed as “de-socialization”. However, this does not necessarily mean renouncing a traditional social standards and composition. It is just a matter of shifting away from customary sociality of “closed” to “open” social systems since both them have social boundaries. Open social systems are “networks” and individualization is feature of network sociality (62-63). Individualization is breaking away from the traditional social norms. Individual should now have to build social bonds and make their own choice and order preference. In individualization, identity deeply relies on awareness of relations with others thus it is transformed from a defensive to offensive identity. In addition, network sociality is characterized by a massive amount of encounters and biographies and is not based on shared history or sequence of events. Network sociality reflects the difference involving narrative and information on micro-sociological stage and not ingrained from an ordinary and shared history. For this reason, erosion in lasting friendship, accountability and trust are seen as possible consequences (Wittel 2005:65). Network Sociality and the Communications Technology Network sociality according to Wittel (2005:69) is a “technological society” since it’s deeply associated with communications technology. It’s a sociality founded on the use of different technological advancement such as mobile phones, email, answering machines, and more. It’s a de-localized, a remote sociality, mobile and always on the move, and based on “technological closeness” (70). Face-to-face interaction and interactions over a distance is inseparable. The integration of mobile communications with everyday interaction is a common scene and has become a new social figuration. The Influence of Network Sociality to Mobile Phones The logic of network and the new figuration of sociality which is extremely entrenched on communication technology influenced the temporal and spatial mediations of the mobile phones. The usage of mobiles can seen simultaneously in different levels such as individual (as we mentioned earlier), micro-sociological (as discussed by Wittel (2005)), and socio-cultural level. Not only does it is influenced by network sociality but it is also seen as a symbol of discussions on issues of democracy, free enterprise, individuality, and redefining of the term “place” (Hjort and Khoo 2007:1). As the so called “new media” (which is the union of information and communication) transforms and created a “new economy”, the working practice of the community also changes into a networking practice (Wittel 2005:53). The new social figuration demands a high degree of mobility and communication and more and more people are becoming freelancers who are fully reliant on their resources and social capital. Mobility is therefore required in order to catch up with people who are always on the move and speed in social encounters or to establish and re-establish social contacts. Information exchange in network sociality is the backbone of the sector and therefore distribution of information is critical. The advent of mobiles phones was perceived by sociologist in the early 1960’s in a community in the future they call a global village. It is the same perception that brought us information society as worldwide common place and an image of a village where everyone can talk to anybody. However, the real issue is not what kind of community mobile telephony help to form but what community inspired it use. The images of the village is separated by physical and spartial confines along with social boundaries and as a result of the industrial revolution a lot of people living in this village are oblige to work outside these boundaries. The distance created between home and workplace soon form a new social factor and the development of transportation and communication took place. From there onwards transportation and communication went alongside building railroads and telegraph lines and with all the radical changes occurring in the new modern community, new social process also came to being with the birth of the natural community (Lorente and Vazquez 2002:9-14). The rapid growth of the natural community then brought a new space less community that are liberated from space limitations and give rise to a modern society. The newly created modern community is then must overcome the barriers of time (temporal) and spatial limitations in order to communicate thus they are strained to build tools for interfacing and networking. The network society which is actually a social network in need of constant interfacing built telecommunications facilities and computer infrastructure. The telephone is the most important tool in the social network and mobile phones are the most useful one. Mobile phones became the primary key in maintaining such community because members of the modern social networks are spatially separated. They can now talk to friends and relatives, and perform their profession on synchronous times while on different distant places. This explains the sudden increase of mobile communications which was influenced by the principle of network sociality. The success of mobile phones can now attributed to fact that it is ideal modern social interaction since mediation devices is vital particularly to present day mobile people. It has become the most localized device utilized for both inter-personal and professional contacts (Lorente and Vazquez 2002:13-14). People move a lot that spaces became their workplace and interacting with friends’ in virtual space. According to Veralind (2002), work practice becomes mobile and work or work activities can no longer depend exclusively on workplace boundaries or the immediacy of co-workers (1). Works are conducted during and throughout mobility and work become in a sense distributed across multiple boundaries. The need to access co-workers or business clients and partners made them seek a better tool like mobile phones and other computer mediated devices. Mediated communication eliminates the distance and compress time. The logic of network sociality further demands more development of appropriate technology since it can facilitate the autonomy of place so the work can be done anytime and in any place. They have a strong and valid reason to be mobile since they need to perform task in specific place and in a certain time. In a study of sales persons working behaviour, it turn out that these people are performing their office works while driving their car or trapped in traffic jams Veralind (2002:2). In general, mobile workers are conducting their work while on the move and their movement is recognized as the core activity itself. In one case study, bus drivers and road inspectors are selected to analyze collaborative work in real mobile situation. The result reveals that even driving alone in their bus, these drivers still are collaborating and coordinating with other road users. This is a group of people involved in simultaneous coordination with members of the same workgroup. Overall, there is a resemblance in their use of places and other elements of what they call mobile workplace Veralind (2002:3). Conclusion If we are going to review Wittels (2005) argument, we will find the same interpretation that network sociality combines work and play. The mobility of these social groups member simply requires versatile communication devices to survive. Their working practices are by all means diverse and lack the attachment to work and people found in the customary working attitudes. They are “nomadic” (65) moving from one company to another, mixing jobs and shifting from one profession to another, and completely dependent on their own resources. These transformations of social behaviour and working practices seems to rely on the power of technology particularly communication devices such as mobile phones. The time compression or the temporal advantage offered by mobile phones which the network social group helps to design, is the exact requirements of people with time critical businesses. The advantage of spatial mediation in eliminating the barriers of distance and place from people who are always on the move complements the networking social behaviour and requirements. Overall, mobile phones temporal and spatial mediations are the primary key in realizing network sociality which incidentally through social evolution and necessity created the technology of mobile phones. Work Cited List Corino Gianni, 2004, Spatial Issues and Performative Media in Digital Mobility: A Network Perspective, Digital Futures MSC, Final Dissertation, online, Date of Access: 05/24/07, Hjorth Larissa, and Olivia Khoo, 2007, Collect Calls, M/C Journal 10.1 (2007), 26 May. 2007 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/00-editorial.php Lorente Santiago and Vazquez Carmen, 2002, Communication: Urban Space and Mobile Phones, Paper submitted to the International Conference on Mobile Communication: The Social and Cultural Impact/Meaning of Mobile Communication ,Chunchon, Korea, 13-14 July 2002 Rettie Ruth, 2005, Presence and Embodiment in Mobile Phone Communication, PsychNology Journal, 2005 Volume 3, Number 1, 16 – 34, Business School, Kingston University, Kingston Hill, KT2 7LB, UK Vesterlind Daniel, 2002, Mobility and Social Spatiality, Interactive Institute, Dept of Science and Technology Studies, Gothenburg University Wittel Andreas, 2001, Toward a Network Sociality, Theory, Culture & Society 2001 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 18(6): 51–76, [0263-2764(200112)18:6; 51–76; 022491] Read More