week 3 readings: mobility
The issue of mobility is one that will only grow in importance. As it grows, scholars will have to develop new ways to study mobility. These new methods of inquiry are what Shelly & Urry concern themselves with. They develop a new mobility paradigm and then discuss ways it can be studied, which though important, I think occasionally fails. I don't have a problem with the new paradigm. It makes sense to recognize a balance between sedentarism and nomadism and to recognize that mobility makes some groups more mobile and other groups less mobile and more sedentary (210). I am afraid that some of the novel research methods the authors describe may cross the line from productive research into a sort of pseudo science that is more storytelling than science. I don't take issue with any of the specific approaches; I think they all could provide useful information. I just worry that in the early years of the new mobility paradigm there might be a tendency to publish weak research on mobile ethnographies, time-space diaries, memory, and imaginary travel. I have no doubt some valuable research will come from these methods, but in the mean time, I fear a lot of purely speculative research may be passed off as something more concrete than it has any hope of being.
I enjoyed Kellerman's article and found myself agreeing with many of the links he makes between automobility, telephony, internetness, and wirelessness. Kellerman occasionally falls into a trap Manovich recognizes when he attributes new uses to new technologies when old technologies provided basically the same functions. An example he keeps using (probably because it's the easiest link between automobility and wirelessness) is a driver calling another driver to warn about a traffic jam. I've certainly done that on my cell phone, but this isn't a new capability. Maybe the direct interaction between two people regarding traffic is new, but old technology (such as radio traffic reports) provided drivers with means to use technology to avoid traffic jams. Cell phones are awesome, but it's important that we not overstate our arguments about the new options new technologies provide us with.
Another interesting thing Kellerman's article made me think of are the laws passed in places like California and DC that prohibit the use of cell phones while driving. This is an example of government regulating wireless technologies the same way it regulates automobility. This leads directly into a kind of regulation discussed in Jensen's article: 'the larger normative, regulative, and cultural codes of interacting whilst moving' (155). Mobile technologies are relatively new, and people simply have not derived a true system of what;s okay to do and what's not okay to do. The example of cell phone restrictions on drivers is one of regulatory code. There are other kinds of regulations though the might end up being more important. Most of us have experience with at least one example of social regulation on mobile technologies--waiting in a line at a convenience store and seeing a sign that says 'please turn off your ipod and get off your cell phone when you order.'
I think one of the most interesting questions facing wireless technology is how we will develop our social norms. Jensen looks at how pedestrian norms differ in places like Sweden and Hong Kong, but one doesn't have to go nearly that far to see how pedestrian norms vary. I'm from DC, and in places like DC and NY, you follow a different system than other parts of the country. For example, you simply don't stand on the left side of an escalator in the Metro or the Subway. You stand on the right, you walk on the left. If you stand on the left, you cause people who are in real hurries to miss metro or subway cars and you deserve to be yelled at. I would say most people in DC and NY recognize this. The problem is, both cities are huge tourist destinations, so a significant portion of people in certain areas of the cities are not familiar with this norm. The spread of mobile technologies will only exacerbate this problem, particularly because wireless technology is spreading so quickly in the developing world. The Internet, cars, and telephony spread first in the Western world, so many of the legal regulations, market regulations, and social regulations on these areas were determined in Western terms. Now that mobile technology is spreading through the developing world at a pace that matches the Western world, will our regulations on the technology be forced to incorporate more of a non-Western perspective? If I'm making any sense with this point, what does everyone think this will look like? (I cut about 200 words off my rant about 'left standers' on escalators)
Wood and Graham's article deals with boundaries and how collectives use boundaries to control movement and access. The article makes the valid point that many of the boundaries or surveillance technologies collectives introduce are not initially intended to restrict movements and rights. People introduce way to increase efficiency (such as the 'self driving cars' Dr. Packer discusses), and don't realize that they lose freedom and become more easily trackable. One need only look at a number of dystopic narratives to understand that increased access and efficiency can have unintended consequences. The one that comes immediately to mind, though it only deals tangentially with mobility, is Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. In the novel, women are all of a sudden stripped of any access to money when the government locks their bank accounts. The women had bought in to the efficiency and increased mobility of the modern banking system, a system that made it possible to completely control them. What would we do now if, all of a sudden, our ATMs stopped working?
One problem I have with this type of research is the discussion of divides between social classes these new technologies contribute to. I look at discussions of divides and think the researchers are being idealistic. I wish there was no divide in society, and I'm not getting into any kind of political discussion, but it's important to remember that the alternative to rich people having new technologies is not everyone having new technologies. The alternative is no one having new technologies. Yeah?. Random point. Please argue.
Alternate titles for this blog post:
'The week Jordan shamelessly stole Matt's idea'
'Why do British people hate Z's so much?'
'How imaginary travel might get you tenure'