August 11, 2005
Personal, Portable, Pedestrian : Mobile Phones in Japanese Life
Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life , by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe and Misa Matsuda, a newly released book on mobile communication use in Japan, covering the transformation of keitai from business tool to personal device for communication and play.
The essays in this groundbreaking collectiondocument the emergence, incorporation, and domestication of mobile communications in a wide range of social practices and institutions. The book first considers the social, cultural, and historical context of keitai development, including its beginnings in youth pager use in the early 1990s.
It then discusses the virtually seamless integration of keitai use into everyday life, contrasting it to the more escapist character of Internet use on the PC. Other essays suggest that the use of mobile communication reinforces ties between close friends and family, producing "tele-cocooning" by tight-knit social groups. The book also discusses mobile phone manners and examines keitai use by copier technicians, multitasking housewives, and school children. Personal, Portable, Pedestrian describes a mobile universe in which networked relations are a pervasive and persistent fixture of everyday life."
Mimi posted a draft of the intro chapter as well as the the table of contents.
[via networked performance]
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