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Cell Phones Changing Social Group Communication
Mortimer.CA writes "An interesting article on how cell phones are changing the way people interact and get together in Japan. Some interesting quotations: 'To not have a keitai (cell phone) is to be walking blind, disconnected from just-in-time information on where and when you are in the social networks of time and place.' And the new social faux pas: 'One college student I spoke to described leaving one's phone at home or letting the battery die as "the new taboo."' The article mentions the book Smart Mobs which was mentioned on Slashdot before. I keep thinking how Marshal McLuhan said that our new inventions change the way we view the world. This is 'obvious' now, but was quite a new idea when he thought of it. In the 40s and 50s you "needed" to get a (land line) phone, then it was cars, email, and now cell phones. What's next? Is it simply a matter of keeping up with the Joneses?"
article, They are technology crazed in a way most westerners can only begin to imagine. I used to think I was a techno geek, until I went to Japan. Now I feel like a luddite sometimes. The devices and the infrastructure are just not here in the west.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
It is a new common assumpion that everyone has a cell phone. Thanks to digital networks, it is affordable to even the average joe to be connected at all times. They have long since eclipsed pagers as "the thing to have", making them, in some situations, more of a status symbol than as a way to stay connected. Pagers were at one time seen to be something carried by drug dealers and doctors, but never so with cellphones. This is probably due to the fact that everyone likes to have conversations, talking or by messaging. This trend is only going to continue, and get bigger and badder, hell, even smaller as well. I think that sums it up for me.
i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
This isn't the "future" of society we're seeing, its just a waypoint on the path to complete ridiculousness began by an unhealthy obsession with social rules and kitschy gadgets.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Some communications systems have subject lines. Memos and E-mails do, but phone calls and letters don't. Voicemail usually doesn't, although some online voice chat systems do have introductory messages. Telegrams didn't have subject lines. SMS, arguably, is subject lines only.
Subject lines help enormously in managing information overload. Subject lines for phone calls could be a real win. Especially if you could input them by voice. Hmm.
Increasingly, especially for young people, dates are being made online. For friends, there is no reason to plan things out days in advance. Just call each other up at the spur of the moment and see who available to party. Is this good or bad? Not really either.
I have all this technology. People can request my attention using a number of methods. However, I do consider all of these requests. It is my choice to answer phone, reply to email, whatever. This pisses people off. Just because someone asks for my attention, am I for some reason required to drop everything and respond? I think not. Rather than showing our age and railing against rational uses of technology, I think we should accept those uses and teach how to use technology rather than have technology use you.
There was a time when people would come to your house, and, if there was time, you would put out some biscuits and make some tea and have a good sit down. This was obviously inefficient and complicated. However, I am still more inclined to talk to someone who would come to my apartment for a chat rather than randomly pick up phone and call me. OTOH, there are some conversations that are better on the phone and email. For instance, i remeber the first time a girl broke up with a friend of mine over email. It saved a useless conversation.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It's entirely necessary if you're the sort of person who can't bear not to have contact with anyone human every 5 seconds.
Seriously, there are a lot of people like this, even in the nerd sector. They struggle to go for a few hours without calling someone, or having a conversation.. whereas lots of us are quite happy to sit hacking Perl or playing with servers until 4am.
So socially, no, I don't think phones are necessary, unless you're an extrovert who suffers from a loneliness complex.
Business-wise, however, cellphones are pretty damn useful. I can give an impression of being available 24/7 wherever I am, and that's worth a lot. A cellphone also allows me to easily call back into my work answerphone and catch up on calls. That's pretty useful stuff.
mogorific carpentry experiments
"I mean, not just being around people who use them, but using them myself. The whole idea of having to carry a phone with you is just... wrong. I don't want to be part of one of these groups."
I don't see what's so 'wrong' about it. A cell phone can be a life saver. Here in Oregon there's been an on-going story about a snow-shoer that got lost on Mount Hood. I bet his family wishes he was carrying a cell phone.
In any case, I can understand the social evolutions of carrying cell phones. When you got a group of people who wants to go do stuff, it's a lot easier to mobilize when the prerequisite is that everybody's home.
Is that wrong? I don't see how. It may be bothersome to you if you've got a large group of friends that insist on calling all the time. But that's the neat thing you can do with a cell phone you can't do with a regular phone, put it on silent. Let the voice mail get it. You really can't do that with a landline for fear of blocking calls to other people who use it.
So no, I don't have the instant "oo dat's bad" reaction to it.
> In the 40s and 50s you "needed" to get a (land line) phone, then it was cars, email, and now cell phones. What's next?
It's not about keeping up just for keeping up's sake; it's new technologies that are useful and become part of most peoples' lives. To explain, let's go back in history... these things were all new-fangled at one time, but now, even though some people live without them, seem pretty "essential":
- 4 walls and a water-proof roof.
- clean water, delivered to your faucet.
- sanitation system - sewer, garbage, etc.
- health insurance, vacinations for diseases you don't even have yet!
- 911, police, and fire services
- a legal system, property ownership
- currency, bank accounts, lending, credit cards
- a regular job (as opposed to self-empolyed farmer/blacksmith/etc. and directly bartering your skills with others)
- prerecorded music, books.
- transportation (taxi, rail, plane, boat, postal system)
- automation (copy machines, computers)
The vast majority of us integrate these into our lives because we feel they have value that exceeds their costs, and not just to keep up.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
But my work habits have long been nomadic: I always look for positions and projects that give me maximum mobility.
This worked as long as it was the only means to get help. The times will come where you will be _expected_ to carry a mobile phone and get your help yourself. When you knock on a door asking for help, people will probably suspect that you are a beggar; "What? You don't have a mobile phone to call help? You are either very strange or a beggar or just lying."
Two years ago, when I called the police to report some obstacle on the freeway, the operator asked for my mobile phone number. When I told him that I was calling from home, he said: "Oh, I was _assuming_ you were calling from your mobile phone. In that case, I need your name and address...". And this was not in Japan. It was in a European country and it was two years ago.
Don't we all realize how - with the increasing ability to always get in contact with our friends - the people directly around us get less and less important? They _have_ to get less important, because we can and do now spend more time to communicate with our friends (the people we already know). Consequently, we cannot spend that time with people around us that we do not know yet. For example, if you get bored on subway you call a friend or send him/her messages, while in previous times the only option was to talk to the the stranger on the next seat (thus possibly making a new acquaintance). Not that talking to strangers in a subway was something we did regularly. In that context, isn't it remarkable that the more people are around us (city vs. small village), the less common is it to talk to people you don't know ?
I find it more and more difficult to make new acquaintances because the reasons to talk to people I don't already know are vanishing...You are not expected to do it - next step is: you are expected to not do it.
Of course, all this has consequences: If your friends are spread out throughout the country (and this is only a matter of time), transport will become more important...not _less_ important as some have predicted for the age of connected world. But this a different story...
The thing is, you don't understand the nature of the Japanese. Where confucian values reign supreme and the youth are brought up to revere group structure, being out of touch can be a BAD THING (TM). The reason for the social change among the Japanese is because the language is heirarchical; the honorific form, which is used to separate people of different ages and different levels of power, is not used on the phone. Things are more casual and you don't have to defer to those about you. It's part of a process of social evolution that is going on in Japan because of the youth.
Some people use cell phones as a means to contact people when it is most convenient. They do not project some sort of social status upon it, they do not attempt to impress people with it, they do not answer it when they don't want to, and they don't perceive their friends hate them if they don't answer immediately.
I can't understand why everybody (who's posting, at least) has this big hang-up on cell phones. It's like this approach to being 'cool' by hating that which is perceived as 'cool'. Is it okay to be 'geek' and not be a social troglodyte?
It feels like middle school, where everyone was so afraid that they saw uncertainty through 'threat' goggles.
Moo
I really don't feel the need to be availible 24/7. I forget to charge my battery from time to time, or turn sound back on after having silenced it in lectures etc.
That said, I read SMS messages on a regular basis. Why? Because those I can ignore, read, reply as I choose. While not great for long conversations, something like a short message and a reply is easier over SMS than over the phone.
"I'll be about 15 mins late today" "Ok, I'll be in the computer lab" is typically what I want to do with a mobile phone. Not talking for hours, if I wanted to do that I'd normally be at home with a normal phone anyway. So while cell calls are overrated, cell phones are not.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
*I* am the one who decides when and where I want to be reachable.
you can only do that if you have a cell phone! with one, you can turn it on or off, screen calls via caller id, voice mail, etc. without a cell phone, how do you decide to be reachable when you're not home?
Is it simply a matter of keeping up with the Joneses?
I think the most positive aspect of cell phones are that you can keep up with the Joneses, but not in the way you think.
When landline-based telephones started to become widespread, they allowed people to communicate over long distances. You could keep up with Mom, Dad, Grandma, and your friends in another state. But only if they were home. Answering machines partially solved this problem, because you could leave messages, but it isn't the same. Cheap, affordable cell phones have allowed the world to keep in touch much more easily than ever before.
I'll use myself as an example. I live in the Western USA, while most of my family and some of my friends live in the Eastern USA. Most of us work weird schedules; some work 12-hour hospital shifts, some work 3rd shift, others normal shifts. There's no real way to keep track of when someone's available and when they're not. Calling a person's house doesn't mean much; is the person at work, or are they just not home? Call their cell phone. If they can talk, they'll answer their phone and talk. If they can't talk, you can leave a message and know they'll get your message as soon as possible, not when they get home (whenever that is). None of us would ever be able to actually talk to each other without cell phones; we're hardly ever home at the same time.
A lot of people don't like cell phones; they don't like the potential of being bothered every minute by others. That's fine (though if you need privacy for awhile, you can just turn your phone off). But many people enjoy the being able to keep in touch with friends and family much easier. Being able to immediately reach the actual person you want to talk to anywhere on the planet at any time has caused the world to be just a bit smaller. This positive benefit outweighs most of the negatives, IMHO.
--Mythos