Week 13: Social/Mobile Technologies
Farley's article reminds me of Lessig's The Future of Ideas; they discuss the history of spectrum and its allocation, monopolies, and innovation. As Jordan points out, government regulation often stunts market growth by allowing conditions that give rise to monopolies—which discourage disruptive technologies, like mobile phones. The article reminds us that although we may think the US is a leader of technological innovation, we often lag behind. And I wonder how this has impacted and will continue to impact the US's standing as a technological innovation leader in the global marketplace. One of Friedman's points in The World is Flat (whatever you might think of the book) is that the US needs to encourage innovation and entrepreneurism to maintain its competitive and comparative advantages in a global market. As mobile technologies become more important, it seems that we are at a disadvantage.
Jacob's rant sums up my feelings about Mann, Nolan, and Wellman's "Sousveillance." The idea of sousveillance is good, this article is not. There is a difference between surveilling the surveillers and accosting employees who happen to be working that day. Similarly, MNW's point about "deferral to authority" is a good one. Deferral to authority has been the defense of violent evil doers, and often is the reason good people do bad things (see Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect). But, I do not see how their article helps to uncover or disrupt this aspect of our society and culture.
Dourish and Bell (DB) discuss space as an infrastructure through which we experience the world. I like their discussion of how different citizens experience the same place differently. I was reminded of how Jordan and I struggled to navigate the streets of downtown Raleigh because we knew neither street names nor landmarks, i.e., bars. So, we were left to wander with Jordan lamenting, or demanding, that all city streets should be named by numbers and avenues/streets. Doing so would allow anyone to quickly find their way in an unfamiliar city. But, what would be lost? DB write, "The naming of streets in an infrastructure for encountering and experiencing the city in terms of regions, paths, and flows—street naming defines patterns of sameness and difference that critically define what you see when you look around you" (p. 4). How do street names define and express a city?
DB state that pervasive computing can facilitate communal activities: "In focusing on the practical organization of space, we want to draw attention to a mutually constitutive relationship between collective understandings of spaces and the practices and activities that people carry out in them" (p. 5). However, they also realize that pervasive computing could be an impediment to the local organization of interaction (p. 6). For example, they discuss how art is both a public and private experience: "Art is experienced, critically, not in isolation, but in a space that is moved through and that is occupied simultaneously by others, both companions and strangers. That the experience of art is often a private phenomenon, it is conducted in a public space" (p. 8). As pervasive computing becomes more…pervasive, how will that affect our experience public space? It seems that if most people are occupied by their mobile technologies, they may be moving through the same space, but having completely different experiences—much like how people view and understand art. Then again, how this different from how people have always experienced public space?
DB note that mobile technologies, by breaking the barriers between public/private and physical/virtual spaces, rupture existing social protocols: "The problem with technologies that erase these boundaries then is not simply that they fail, themselves, to recognize socially relevant distinctions, but that they undermine the mechanisms by which members of society can demonstrate, to each other, their sensitivity to these nuances" (p. 13). Cell phones are not annoying, but they allow people to be annoying in new ways. Recall Jonathan Franzen, who I included in my presentation, said that he found nothing more offensive than someone who says, “I love you” on their cell phone in a public space. No cell phone signs and spaces become a way to help determine social protocols. As Goffman might say, we do not yet have fully written social scripts for cell phone usage.
Dr. Silva's hybrid spaces raises many of the same issues as DB, especially with the idea of enfolded space—which, as Jacob notes, can boggle the mind, or mindbottling. I also like Dr. Silva's point that interfaces change social interaction: "Every shift in the meaning of an interface requires the re-conceptualization of the type of social relationships and spaces it mediates" (p. 3). We can see this with different mobile phone interfaces. Although I do not have a RAZR, I have heard that their interface is terrible, affecting how users use it to interact with others. The iPhone made it easier and, let’s be honest, cooler, hipper, awesomer to access the mobile web, though I wonder how much of that had to do with the packaged data plan. If you have to pay for it, you may as well use it. Which raises another question: will the general population in the US only really start to adopt and use the mobile internet and location-based games if data plans as opposed to minutes become standard?
Silva notes that the mobile internet and mobile networks help users to find people in public places (p. 20). But as more people begin to use these features, it seems these technologies and applications will become even better ways to avoid people. Jordan says, and I am sure he is not alone, that he uses Facebook to communicate with certain people, yet avoiding face-to-face interaction. So, I guess I wonder if there will be a backlash to all this connectivity. Or will everyone be both surveillers and sousveillers, and at the same time? Soursveillance?