Mobile Technology in Asia
In Bell’s article, The Age of the Thumb, Bell is “particularly interested in the ways in which cell phones are being deployed, consumed, regulated, rejected, and naturalized in urban Asia” (p.69). He discusses four ways in which mobile technologies are seen as cultural rather than technological devices. Firstly cell phones are used as a communicational tool. Asian countries use cell phones to communicate in much the way that Americans do, both for meaningless chatter along with micro-coordination. However, unlike Americans, people in Asian countries have a higher rate of adoption of SMS functions, this can be explained by the difference in our languages. Asian countries utilize a character based written language allowing for more words to appear in a text message. Secondly Asian countries use cellular technology for the spread of information. They utilize up to the minute automatic SMS messages to obtain information such as stock quotes, weather, and sports scores. In Malaysia, cellular technology can be used as a way of keeping up with their heavily Muslim religious traditions, such as locating Mecca and reminders of prayer times. Thirdly cellular technology can be used as “cites for anxiety control” (p. 78). This can be seen in the high control of the government of china over cellular communication. This idea can also been seen when a person is put in a stressful situation and is able to cope by using their cell phone. Fourthly, cell phones are seen as a defining characteristic of who you are. Cell phones can be decorated, by the owner, to better represent themselves by the use of charms and faceplates etc. Phones can also show a persons social and family status. By adjusting the backgrounds on your phone you can customize your phone to show both the relationship with your family or portray your status in society. According to Bell, cellular phones are not only technological pieces of equipment, but also a cultural device with many purposes specific to a particular culture.
McLealand’s article points out that cultural approach and not a technological approach is necessary when dealing with studying technology adoption within a society. They discuss Castell’s et al’s Mobile Communication in Society as a handbook for dealing with the sociocultural impacts of mobile technologies, but point out that all though they provide important statistics pertaining to adoption of mobile technologies among different cultures, they leave out how why these cultures adopted the technologies in the ways that they did. He cites other research that concluded that technologies are not universal; rather, it is necessary to attend to 'the heterogeneous co-constitution of technology across a transnational stage' (Ito, 2005, p. 7). The author moves on to cite specific ways in which deferring eastern cultures have adopted and used cellular technologies and also how their pre mobile technology influenced the ways in which they use the technology. Most notably, McLealand discusses the use of cellular phones by the people of the Philippians. Despite their poor economy the people these people were able to heavily adopt the technology and use it throughout the everyday life.
Both articles discuss how cellular technology plays a role in the lives of those living in Asia and address some of the culture reasoning behind such uses. I feel that the adoption of cellular phones by developing cultures, such as the Philippians, makes perfect economical sense. In our country the mobile phone is replacing the landline among young people and, just as the people most rapidly adopting cellular technologies are the young, it would make logical sense that a younger technological country would be the fastest to adopt a new technology. In addition young people are more likely to choose the most affordable option, sense in general they do not have the most money. Similarly again these developing countries share this trait with young people. Building a full land line telephone service would cost well more than a cellular service and since these nation’s do not have the economic resources that more technologically advanced nations have they would be more inclined to choose such an inexpensive option.