Taken for Grantedness

The Embedding of Mobile Communication into Society

Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Technology, Social Aspects, Engineering
Cover of the book Taken for Grantedness by Richard Ling, The MIT Press
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Author: Richard Ling ISBN: 9780262304344
Publisher: The MIT Press Publication: October 26, 2012
Imprint: The MIT Press Language: English
Author: Richard Ling
ISBN: 9780262304344
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication: October 26, 2012
Imprint: The MIT Press
Language: English

An examination of how the mobile phone has become part of the fabric of society—as did such earlier technologies as the clock and the car.

Why do we feel insulted or exasperated when our friends and family don't answer their mobile phones? If the Internet has allowed us to broaden our social world into a virtual friend-net, the mobile phone is an instrument of a more intimate social sphere. The mobile phone provides a taken-for-granted link to the people to whom we are closest; when we are without it, social and domestic disarray may result. In just a few years, the mobile phone has become central to the functioning of society. In this book, Rich Ling explores the process by which the mobile phone has become embedded in society, comparing it to earlier technologies that changed the character of our social interaction and, along the way, became taken for granted.

Ling, drawing on research, interviews, and quantitative material, shows how the mobile phone (and the clock and the automobile before it) can be regarded as a social mediation technology, with a critical mass of users, a supporting ideology, changes in the social ecology, and a web of mutual expectations regarding use. By examining the similarities and synergies among these three technologies, Ling sheds a more general light on how technical systems become embedded in society and how they support social interaction within the closest sphere of friends and family.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

An examination of how the mobile phone has become part of the fabric of society—as did such earlier technologies as the clock and the car.

Why do we feel insulted or exasperated when our friends and family don't answer their mobile phones? If the Internet has allowed us to broaden our social world into a virtual friend-net, the mobile phone is an instrument of a more intimate social sphere. The mobile phone provides a taken-for-granted link to the people to whom we are closest; when we are without it, social and domestic disarray may result. In just a few years, the mobile phone has become central to the functioning of society. In this book, Rich Ling explores the process by which the mobile phone has become embedded in society, comparing it to earlier technologies that changed the character of our social interaction and, along the way, became taken for granted.

Ling, drawing on research, interviews, and quantitative material, shows how the mobile phone (and the clock and the automobile before it) can be regarded as a social mediation technology, with a critical mass of users, a supporting ideology, changes in the social ecology, and a web of mutual expectations regarding use. By examining the similarities and synergies among these three technologies, Ling sheds a more general light on how technical systems become embedded in society and how they support social interaction within the closest sphere of friends and family.

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