Week 13: Mobile Tech
Mobile Telephone History by Tom Farley discusses the impact on government bureaucracy and corporate hegemony on technological advancement. I have two points here: First, Farley makes it clear that the FCC held back mobile telephone progress between the 1930s and 1970s. I wish Farley had, however, gone into more detail and explained exactly why the FCC failed to give corporations the freedom and airspace/waves they needed. Second, Farley makes it clear that the domination of a single corporation also stifles technological development. This can be seen most clearly when he says, “The Bell System, serving 80 % of the American population, and custodian of Bell Laboratories, was broken apart. Complete divestiture took place on January 1, 1984. After the breakup new companies, products, and services appeared immediately in all fields of American telecom, as a fresh, competitive spirit swept the country” (27-28). I guess there’s not too much more to say about this that hasn't been said, other than Farley’s history of mobile telephones seems to suggest that both governments and corporations must resist the urge to control resource territory, spatial or physical, or else advancement is delayed, often by decades.
Mann and company:
Regarding Sousveillance: If this article ever had a motto, it would be “if you can’t beat them, then join them, suckers!”
In Sousveillance, Mann, Nolan, and Wellman assert that surveillance creates an unequal power alignment, with the surveillers having power over the surveilled (334). Therefore, they conclude the way to reconstitute the power structure in society is to surveille the big bad surveillers. They state, “reflectionism seeks to increase the equality between surveiller and the person being surveilled (surveillee), including enabling the surveillee to surveil the surveiller” (333). However, they also assert that “there is a digital divide in the unequal access to these technologies by the general public. The proliferation of environmental intelligence, in the form of cameras and microphones observing public spaces, challenges the traditional ability of an individual being able to identify and watch the watchers” (335). On this particular point, I do not agree with the authors given the fact that vast numbers of websites sell “spy cameras” and various surveillance devices. The “digital divide” they point to in this article just is not wide enough for me to think that the average person is ever unable to engage in sousveillance, which they define as “photographing cab drives…government officials… police officers…” (334).
However, something pacifist in me seriously questions the whole approach of “if you can’t beat them, then join them in their surveillance.” I am thinking now of the old Biblical mantra, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:43). Taking this mantra literally, I would say that, in its essence, this means don’t act like the people who you think are morons because then you become a moron too. Or put another way, if someone mistreats you, then it is better not to mistreat them back. Of course, engaging in sousveillance may not always mistreat; it is meant to act as a balancing mechanism or as a way to keep authority “in check,” so to speak. Nevertheless, I tend to think that Ghandi had the right approach to the violence in India by responding with non-violence. In the same way, I think the overwhelming amount of surveillance (if one posits it as a “bad thing”) can be better responded to by starting a mass movement that rejects all uses of surveillance. Put another way, being perceived by authority figures as a deviant and a radical person who “fights the man” may not be the most effective rhetorical position. Besides, even if one chooses to use sousveillance it would not negate the effect of the surveillance. As Jacob says, “Even if I watch the watchers, they’re still watching me.”
Silva:
Dr. Silva’s article was very pertinent to my final paper. Essentially, in my paper, I will be arguing that a shift has occurred in our culture in terms of the way we think about computers and that this shift has lessened deterministic concerns and fears. The shift I am referring to can be demonstrated as the difference between 1) moving into an enclosed computer-space/cyberspace where one feels separated from one’s body to 2) taking hold of the computer and moving it out into one’s own space, into the open environment. Luckily for me, many of Dr. Silva’s quotes demonstrate the shift as it appears in the academic literature. Early on in the article, for example, Dr. Silva talks about computers being embedded in the outdoors as a result of mobile technologies. “Because mobile devices create a more dynamic relationship with the Internet, embedding it in outdoor, everyday activities, we can no longer address the disconnection between physical and digital spaces” (262). Here, one can see the lack of entrapment by cyberspace and the attendant feelings of freedom. Similarly, Dr. Silva recognizes the cultural shift away from metaphors of “entering” and “immersing” oneself in cyberspace. She states, “users do not perceive physical and digital spaces as separate entities and do not have the feeling of "entering" the Internet, or being immersed in digital spaces, as was generally the case when one needed to sit down in front of a computer screen and dial a connection” (263). And again, as Dr. Silva discusses the impact of mobile technologies, she makes it clear that many people around the world (particularly in Japan) are now using computer technologies less to construct cyber identities and more to “find friends” (264). In fact, while technology becomes increasingly mobile, I believe the internet user’s online travel is becoming increasingly immobile as RSS feeds become popular. The RSS feed, I believe, is another manifestation of the information coming to us, as opposed to us going into it.
I will likely assert in my paper that this concept of a “mixed reality” by Milgram and Colquhoun as well as the concept of “augmented spaces” by Manovich as well as the concept of the “hybrid space” put forward by Silva represent a second phase in the movement out of cyberspace, with the final and third phase being the loss of a need to articulate any boundaries between a cyber-reality/space and a material reality/space at all, the phase that we are, as I will assert, just now entering. Hence, we will see the disappearance of these terms as the distinction between computer and human become less important to us. Additionally, I may argue that the integration of the computer into the body or the body as computer (the use of the skin, for example, as the transmission device), which according to Paul Dorish’s article has been called “ubiquitous computing” and “context-aware computing,” will walk through these same phases: clear boundaries drawn, having the most fear, and as fear dissipates, the boundaries will become less important.
Dourish:
The article by Paul Dourish of the University of California at Irvine was also useful as evidence for my final paper. In that article, he states the following as his working premise: “One particularly interesting issue in this transformation is the move from a concern with virtual spaces to a concern with physical ones. Basically, once computation move off the desktop, computer science suddenly has to be concerned with where they might have gone. Where computer science and human-computer interaction have previously been concerned with disembodied cognition, they must now look more directly at embodied action and bodily encounters between people and technology” (414). This is exactly what my paper will attempt to do—look at the body and its interaction with computer technology.
My final note for this blog will be from a comment about the integration of computing systems that was made Dourish’s article. Doursih states, “Graham and Marvin (2001) have pointed towards a number of trends, including the increasing dependence upon infrastructures for life, increasingly contested forms of interoperation and standardization, and an ever-more complex regulatory environment within which these issues are embedded” (416). In short, if we accept, as Dourish asserts, that mobile computer technology and the human social infrastructure are becoming integrated, then we must also recognize the extent to which we are becoming increasingly dependent upon the infrastructure and, hence, upon the government and corporations. Therefore, to tie this back into my paper topic, I think that our dissolving fear of technology as a result of its mobility (our control over it and the loss of the perception that it controls us) puts us in the exact right position for us to lose more control over ourselves than we may have imagined, intended, or wanted.