Mobile Media 2007

July 7th, 2007
beeping/miss calls, conferences

Kudos to Gerard Goggin and Larissa Hjorth for arranging a great conference in Sydney last week.  Mobile Media 2007 welcomed attendees from around the world, and did a great job pushing new themes within the mobile research community.

There were more than a few papers dealing with mobiles in the developing world, although they were interspersed throughout the conference panels.  Thus, I missed a few good papers, including Thomas Apperley’s talk on mobile gaming inVenezuela, and most of the papers about SMS/MMS in China. 

I did however, get to see Jack Qiu’s presentation on the ‘Information Have-Less’ and their use of ‘Working-Class ICTs’, a topic he continues to explicate with a great mix of ethnographic/micro observations and macro-level summary data from the rapidly changing telecommunications environment in China. (earlier presentation here)

Genevieve Bell also touched on issues relevant to mobiles in the developing world, during her keynote. She mentioned the phenomenal success of handsets and services to support the needs of Muslim users (example), and mentioned beeping/miss call behavior. In general, Genevieve emphasized the importance of exploring the regulatory and infrastructural factors which both support and complicate the ways people use mobiles in different locations. Indeed, she questioned whether there is really a single device called a ‘mobile’, asking us to consider instead the whole range of mobile devices and functions, notably GPS.

I presented a small paper on differences in perspectives towards mobile phones vs. PCs, among small businesses in urban India. This is based on a Q sort I put together a few months ago, but only with the assistance of Gaana Nair, Gautam Prakash, and Arundathi Vishwanath, all students (past or current) at Christ College in Bangalore. Thanks again!

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