On Work & Play in a User-Generated World

Going Mobile: Cell Phones in Context

At the beginning of this chapter, author Naomi Baron mentions her 1998 train ride on a Quiet Car in Britain where talking on your mobile phone was prohibited. And this was more than a decade ago. I watched a show on the German Autobahn and nobody talks on mobile phones or texts or eats while driving. Germans take driving very seriously, just as the Britons take train courtesy seriously. 

Sometimes I feel the Europeans are much more advanced than us in this regard. Maybe it's because mobile phones came into being much sooner in Europe than here in the US. But I think it's something more. I'm generalizing, but I think Americans seem to care less if their actions are discourteous or annoying to others around them than those of other cultures. My wife and I stopped going to movies because of cell phones and talkers in theaters. But I digress.

The author mentions (132) she's yet to hear of any Americans using their mobiles for beeping (providing a single ring and hanging up to save money) as a thrift measure. She doesn't know the Aveni's. My daughter gives me a single ring on her cell phone to let me know she's on her way home to save on minutes. That's been the rule for years, still in place even though our service has dropped from .25/minute down to a dime. It's the principle of it. And it's kept her conscious to save money where possible.

The author remarks about the Silence on the Chikatetsu (subway) in Japan. I was in Japan for 3 weeks in the early 90's and can attest to this. It is a social transgression to be loud or distracting when riding on mass transit in Japan. Generally, courtesy (and get along-ness) is paramount in Japan for 2 reasons: First, because it's improper to stand out among the crowd and second, because it's so densely populated that without cooperation among citizens, Japanese society wouldn't be able to function. My most used word phrase in Japan was, "non ban sen" meaning which tracks do I go to? By the time I'd show my ticket and typically get a response from the gatekeeper, 15 people had lined up behind me and not once did anyone say hurry up. As Baron remarks, (133), "crowds keep moving - but in silence."

I was in Japan before the prevalence of mobile phones but I remember the young girls with their Hello Kitty pagers looking just like we do today with our phones. Indeed, as Kenichi Ishii remarks in Implications of Mobility, Japanese youth culture in the mid-1990s embraced a unique form of communication called berutomo (pager friends) especially among schoolgirls (349). Pager friends did not know each other’s names and had never met; however, they knew the pager numbers of their correspondents. They exchanged short messages such as ‘‘hello’’ and ‘‘good night’’ on their pagers almost everyday and sometimes even talked to each other about their personal problems via pagers (Ishii, 2004). I thought this was fascinating but unique to Japan and I'd never see something like that here. Hah.

In America, just as in Japan, these devices are, as Baron states, truly keitai, (something you carry with you) a "snug and intimate technosocial tethering, a personal device and mundane presence in everyday life" (134). This is a perfect definition for cell phones, particularly for young girls. It's way more than communications when my daughter has to have her phone next to her when she's sleeping and has to bring it to the dinner table. I took her phone for a day because of bad grades. Pulling off fingernails would've been less painful. Grades are better now.

The People We Become: 

The Cost of Always Being On

I love humorist Dave Barry's remark, "... I prefer email because it's such an effective way of getting information to somebody without running the risk of becoming involved in human conversation" (220). I think this just about sums this chapter up. But I do think it's hard to say whether the internet decreases the strength of of our close social relationships. I think only if we let it.

You gonna pick up if I call?

Maybe we should evaluate technology like the Amish bishops do: Does it bring us together or draw us apart? Rheingold (223) interviewed an Amish man about getting a telephone. The man said, "What would that lead to? We don't want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a telephone. It's not just how you use the technology. We're also concerned about the kind of person you become when you use it."

So what kind of people do we become by using the technology? When I think that we don't seem to care if how we communicate in public is discourteous or annoying to others and some have stopped going to movies because of it, I'm apt to wonder about this just as Baron has. For what it's worth, since I untethered from a mobile phone after my previous job 6 years ago, I think I listen better and appreciate more of the ambience around me now, including people. Maybe that's what the Amish are talking about. Although I don't expect others to ever untether, every once and a while, I bet many might enjoy it.

The Death of Social Schizophrenia

As a baby boomer, I never really thought about how I've spent my life in a schizophrenic world but I guess I have: teacher, student, dad, husband, son, brother, boss, subordinate and many more - each with a different role and somewhat different persona. Yea, I guess if through social media every person of significance in my life could see me in every other role I have to play, I'd likely appear to be a very different person to them. 


But I think Qualman in this chapter is implying I'm not being genuine playing all these roles when he says, "People are best off being comfortable in their own skin and not pretending to be anything that they aren't" (120). And that social media is some sort of remedy to this: by living with more transparency through the network, I'll be somehow better off by only having to be one person or personality or essence. Hmm. Frankly, I believe I'm more well-rounded having to live with the challenges of all these different roles and succeed within them.