[ 7] Ito, M., and D. Okabe. “Intimate Connections: Contextualizing Japanese youth and mobile messaging.” In Information Technology At Home, edited by R. Kraut, 235-247. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

(“Smithers! I want that report on my desk by Monday”), and we work out our feelings about others (“I saw Frank at the party, and he was being an absolute boar”). We can give a friend what Ito and Okabe call a discrete “tap on the shoulder” [ 7], or we can carry on a full-blown impassioned argument. Thus, in addition to its function as a coordination device, the mobile phone is a channel through which we maintain and develop the relations in our intimate sphere. We can tell jokes via the mobile just as we can gossip, nurture, flirt, quarrel, condole, assuage, and scheme. In the process of doing this, we work out—or perhaps destroy—our sense of trust with one another, and by and large we cement our relationships [ 8].

The very accessibility afforded by the mobile phone also means that we often need to manage our communications in different situations. Using the mobile phone can disturb well-established routines and assumptions about accessibility and who is able to speak to whom at different times and places. Is talking with our children during an intense business meeting just as inappropriate as talking to a business partner when we are at home intensively reading a bed-time story to the child? Because of these considerations, romance, courting, the courte-sies of working life, and family interactions have taken on new dimensions as a result of the mobile phone.

While the device helps to maintain our interactions with those in the intimate sphere, it can also be a threat to our sense of local sanctity. We are attuned to rules of courtesy that

govern our copresent interaction. However, since people from our intimate sphere have direct access via the mobile phone, we are faced with an awkward situation. In some cases, we may have to choose between using the mobile phone to speak to those who are emotionally close to us or to put them on hold while we maintain our copresent interaction with individuals who are perhaps more peripheral. Because of this we are in the process of developing strategies with which to limit mobile access. We are also working out how to deal with our more intimate interactions that take place in the public sphere. Different types of barriers are used to work out the degree to which the moral logic is applied.

[ 8] This is not to say that we can not also argue and bicker via the mobile phone.

The Reciprocal Taken-for-Granted-ness of Mobile Communication There are various ways in which the mobile telephone is establishing its place in our lives. It has become a quasi-indispens-able part of our daily kit. Perhaps the way to best understand this is to think about what it is like to do without the device. Leaving without our mobile phone is somewhat like leaving without a wallet; it’s the occasion of a short panic. Forgetting our phone also means that others must work around our forgetfulness. Given other’s assumption that we can plan—and re-plan— our meetings with friends, not having a mobile phone means that we are cut off from others. Being without a telephone means that we do not know the latest changes in the plans of our eventual meeting partners. If being phoneless it is not a

problem for us, then, as James Katz reminds us, it presents a problem for others [ 9]. This means that we not only take our own phone for granted, but more important, others take for granted that we have one. There is a developing web of reciprocal expectations with regards to our ownership and use of mobile communication. Not having a mobile phone can be seen as a sign of independence, but it also means that others increasingly have to make special considerations with regard to the phoneless individual.

The automobile and the mobile phone are curiously linked. The automobile gave us a certain radius of travel. The adoption of the automobile resulted in the expansion of cities, the dispersion of travel and commuting, and increased complexity in daily transport. In many ways, the mobile phone completes the automobile revolution. Given the automobile-induced diffusion of individuals, the mobile phone reconnects us with our closest family and friends. In that process it is becoming an assumed part of daily life.

November + December 2008

[ 9] Weiner, E. (2007). Our Cell Phones, Ourselves [Electronic Version]. National Public Radio website. Retrieved 31 January 2008.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rich Ling is a sociologist at Telenor’s research institute near Oslo, Norway and a guest professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He has been the Pohs visiting professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he holds an adjunct position. He is the author of New Tech, New Ties (MIT) and The Mobile Connection (Morgan Kaufmann). Along with Scott Campbell he is the editor of The Mobile Communication Research Series.

DOI: 10.1145/1409040.1409054
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