Bell and McClelland
Bell described how mobile phones are main factors in people's lives in Asia and Australia. Asia is ahead of the United States in technology, making them much more proficient in using cellular phones than we are. In the text, Bell wrote about how cell phones are used to separate home life from people's public lives, for example, in Indonesia it is common for people to have two cell phones, one for work and one for personal use. In Asia, people use cell phones to keep up with people, coordinate, and for safety purposes. They use SMS to look for relevant information, avoid confrontation and coordinate. Since cell phones are so much a part of their lives, some Asian governments have started regulating cell phone use, such as Malaysia, which has banned them from schools. People in Asian countries also use cell phones as a way to reflect who they are. For instance, parents may have a photo of their children as a background or people may use them as a fashion accessory. And those who have opted to not use cell phones feel left out of the loop, and sometimes elderly people, such as parents, feel pressure to use phones. Cellular phones are no longer just a form of technology in many places in Asia, they are a factor in the culture, as well.
McClelland also wrote about how Asian countries use cellular phones as well, highlighting how countries around the world use them in varying ways. He also mentioned how people in different countries use cell phones differently in their private and home lives. Each culture uses cell phones differently, and McClelland does not like the fact that researchers and authors, such as Castells, focused so much of their attention on Western cultures and does not have in-depth information on Asian cultures, only data. But because cultures are so different, McClelland said cell phone usage is not universal but is defined by culture. So cell phone usage around the world cannot be studied without looking into the cultures. Researchers cannot just look at a set of numbers and come to conclusions.
Something that struck me in the McClelland and Bell articles was when they mentioned how people use cell phones to keep their private lives and public lives separate. I often hear how people worry about cell phones being too intrusive into a person's personal live, especially when people at work can have constant access to him/her. The trend in Indonesia in which people have a cell phone for private use and one for public use reminded me of an internship I had a couple summers ago. I shadowed someone who had two cell phones, one for her work and one for personal use. Though she had a phone in her cubicle, she was often on the road and traveling, so she opted to have a cell phone for work. She would answer each phone differently, even though the same people would call both phones. And when she was not working, she would turn off her work cell phone and check her voicemails whenever she went back to work. This shows that even though cell phones are becoming an essential item, especially to professionals, people can still enjoy the convenient uses of having a cell phone for work without being tied down to it.