Hung Up On Mobiles

The Age

Saturday October 11, 2008

Larissa Hjorth

The mobile phone is more than an instrument of communication, writes Larissa Hjorth.

THE mobile phone is one of the most enduring symbols haunting contemporary global media, encapsulating moral debates about the escalating role of technology in everyday life. Whether we call it a mobile phone, cell phone, keitai (Japanese), handy (German), haendupon (Korean) or shouji (Chinese) the ubiquity of the object is unmistakable.

In her Motorola study conducted in 2000, sociologist Sadie Plant deployed bird analogies to conceptualise the emerging performances and forms of etiquette taking flight in urban spaces. While the bird analogy can only go so far in explaining some of the mobile media practices, it can provide insight into the limits and potential of user-created content (UCC) in the rise of democratised, participatory media and new forms of affective and emotional labour epitomised by Web 2.0 (such as social networking sites including Facebook and media such as YouTube). In these debates about the empowered digital citizen and new forms of labour, the bird analogy persists, with the mobile phone becoming the symbol of mobility, and immobility, within contemporary life. This is perhaps most aptly amplified in the different routes of generational mobile media use (and associated forms of intimacy), epitomised by one young user who noted in dismay, "I don't know how my parents got together without the mobile phone".

Indeed the symbolic and material dimensions of the mobile phone have far exceeded the early images of the clumsy big phone that connoted class mobility in films such as Wall Street; films such as Clueless heralded the mobile phone as a rite of passage for younger generations. As the mobile phone has matured into a mobile media device, it has expanded its repertoire of usage, users and symbolic dimensions. It is a symbol for class, generation, "youth", gender, inequality, labour and intimacy to name a few. As a cultural artefact, the mobile phone is a smorgasbord of possibilities signalling the owner's tastes, values and constructions of identity such as class, gender and cultural background. Thus, as a commodity and a cultural practice, the mobile phone has taken new flight patterns. Which, like current airline schedules, is full of as many delays and waiting as much as actual movement.

The multitudes of mobility and immobility in urban spaces are, of course, subject to the location. In each different place, the etiquette and performance of the mobile phone user is adapted. For example, in Japan where talking on keitai is forbidden on public transport, thumbs get a workout messaging (and massaging) the keypad in what has been called "oya yubi sedai" (thumb generation). Exemplifying innovative mobile media convergence, Japan has seen the keitai ring tone industry booming with yearly revenues surpassing that of karaoke sales. As the "aura of crime" increasingly looms in the global rhetoric of "terrorism", mothers in Japan have taken to giving the keitai to their young children in a phenomenon sociologist Misa Matsuda has called "mum in the pocket". The mobile phone has given way to new forms of intimacy and labour.

Mobile media has also been integral in emerging creative industries. In what can be viewed as this century's version of women's literature, young Japanese women are writing keitai shosetsu (mobile novels) for female audiences. These novels, of which there are millions, have quickly been adapted into films and manga and have provided empowerment for young Japanese women. In China, with more than 429.7billion SMS sent in 2006, new forms of labour markets are being created - some exploitative, while others such as duanxin xieshou ("SMS writers") have provided China's "have-less" with employment.

Within urban spaces, mobile phone exercises dominate - from the physical and haptic performances of camera phones to the aural cacophonies of the one-sided soliloquy on public transport. These exercises of mobility and immobility highlight how intimacy is increasingly becoming public. Indeed, in a period in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are inescapable and boundaries between work and life are being redefined, the mobile phone has become an evocative symbol for post-industrial lifestyle.

As one of the most intimate devices, the mobile phone has become a repository for emerging forms of identity. From the adorning of the mobile phone with ornaments that extend the ritual of the charm bracelet in reflecting the experiences and memories of the user, to the material "gift-giving" practices of sending a savoured SMS that feigns immediacy, the mobile phone has become an icon for contemporary full-time intimacy.

While some view it as a symptom that Jack Qiu calls the "wireless leash", others proclaim it as democratising multimedia whereby everyday users can become journalists (mobile journalism "mojo") and media creatives. But, like all new media, mobile media continues to be haunted by older media, debates, histories and stories.

If we return to the bird analogy, perhaps mobile media embodies the zeitgeist of Icarus in which we are left to question

in a world divided by frequent flyer points, whether the sky's thelimit.

Larissa Hjorth is an artist, researcher and lecturer in the Games Programs, School of Creative Media, RMIT University. Her forthcoming book, Mobile Media in the Asia-Pacific (Routledge), is due for release at the end of the year.

© 2008 The Age

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