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?"

Comments

Am I the only that hates cell phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Am I the only that hates cell phones?

[tigertigr]

I don't know about anybody else, but I like my time alone. I like to know that if I am out for a walk or doing something outside my home, no one (unless they are in my immediate vicinity) is going to interfere with that. I like to multi-task my work, but I don't like to multi-task my play.

Re:Am I the only that hates cell phones?

[Alex Thorpe]

I have no desire to carry either a cell phone or pager, even if they were completely free. Anyone needing to reach me can call me at home, and if I'm not there, CallNotes can take a message. I've long considered pagers to be a form of those radio transmitters they tag wild animals with to track them, and I don't want to be tracked. Making a call? I hardly dial out on my phone at home that often, and it's not like there won't be a phone anywhere I go if an emergency comes up!

I use email, sometimes AIM/iChat, and a corded phone with Caller ID. That's all I need.

Re:Am I the only that hates cell phones?

[TheRaven64]

I personally hate the entire idea of telephones. The idea that when they ring you should interrupt whatever you are doing and answer them just seems impolite. I also don't like talking to people on the telephone due to the amount of information you lose. When you talk to someone face-to-face you get all sorts of clues about what they're thinking from their expression, posture and even their smell. Without these you can miss a lot of communication.

I own a mobile, and often carry it around with me, but it's turned off unless I either need to make a call, or know someone actually needs to talk to me. I try to check my messages fairly regularly, and usually get back to people, if they leave one. I do not regard a telephone as a means of communication, but as a way of arranging when to meet people with whom I wish to communicate.

Re:Am I the only that hates cell phones?

[mce]

No you are not the only one.

I work for a micro-electonics research institute. One of our many activities actually is making the implementation of ever smarter and feature-rich cellphones and similar devices ever more easy. Even worse, my very own project is about designing for low power from the system level downwards. One could say we're part of the cell phone companies pipe dreams. (Actually, my project worked closely with one of the major cell phone companies in the past, and now another one is very intersted.) All that just to make very clear that I'm not oposed to the technology for the technology's sake. But neither am I in favour of it "just because".

I will personally *never* be caught having my own cell phone. I will carry/use one if the job that I'm doing at that very moment requires that I be reachable while away from any fixed phone system (which happens maybe once per year), but I flat out *refuse* to give in to the "But sir, you have to be reachable, don't you?" pressure. *I* am the one who decides when and where I want to be reachable. And when I've decided that I'm not to be reached, I will implement that very strictly. Now, I know that one can switch off those buggers when one doesn't want to be disturbed, but that is not the same thing: simply by always carrying that thing around, one creates that expection that one be reachable. Maybe not immediately, but definitely within the hour. People then just assume that they can interrupt your life at any moment, because "Hey, what else (s)he's got that cellphone for, afterall?". Then when you diseble it for more than one or two hours on end, they look at you like you're the bad guy/gall who prevented them from doing something "important" such as telling you they ran into Joe or Mary on the way to the bakery. As if that kind of chit-chat can't wait till next time you really see each other. If by then it's still worthy of being told at all, that is.

Also concerning the "but you have to be reachable" craze: Once upon a time my phone company "discovered" that I use the internet a lot when at home. This is over a plain old dial-up modem, so they figured that "he's got to be reachable, so lets enable our nice (and paying!) mailbox service for him". Now there is some poor helpdesk guy over there who probably still has not recovered from what befell him after I found out what they had done and got in touch to get it disabled again. They charge the person who calls you for leaving the message, they charge you *again* for listening to the recording, and then they charge one of you *yet again* when you finnally do get to speak to one another on the phone? Not with me. Not in a million years.

If all that makes me a social outcast, than so be it.

Re:gotta remember this is a japanease

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the western country. In 2001 95% of 15-24 years Finns had a cell phone. Not having one naturally disconnects you from other to some extent.

What I find odd...

[Black Parrot]

...is when I see friends together at a restaurant or something, and one or both of them spend the whole time yakking to someone else on their cell phone rather than talking to the person they're actually with.

Japan has stronger society links

[jago25_98]

I heard that there is a difference between Japan and here:

here we're more individual and over there they're a lot more social.

This is really noticable if you work for a Japanese company like Sharp. Working in a factory for Toshiba we noticed that in Japan they have them all stand up at the start of the working day to say team-like stuff alligience... wierd. I think they were hoping they could inspire the same team spirit over here :D

I'd like to say more but it'd be offtopic.

Slashdot - Technology heling a new social network

[yy1]

Isn't this what slashdot aims to be? Using technology to help people communicate better. You see the way social networks are formed by the friends lists, the way some people are famous (or infamous) etc.

Technology can facilitate it and broaden the scope of the social group, but it doesn't really change the social dynamic that forms time and again.

In the case of cellphones, it lets a social group form that in previous decades might have only been able to form in a neighborhood, but cellphones let them be far flung over a large city like LA or NYC where friends live in different section and can use the cellphones to coordinate meet ups where as before everyone would just go around the corner or down the street etc...

I sorta think of slashdot as a representative discussion group, where sometimes people say something, sometimes they moderate (vote) for someones who has said something that they think should be heard. And bouncers to chuck out the people who start shouting incoherently. Anyway it lets (or some would say attempts to let) the number of people that can have a meaningful discussion be much larger.

This has happened with every meaningful technological invention, including WRITING. People naturally form social groups around technology, not because of technology.

Re:But the japanese, are, weird :)

[Stig_Soleng]

No, it's not just a few Japanese. I'm Norwegian, and most of the article applies here too, along with Finland and Sweden. I think those percentage
figures in the article are pretty much the same over here, only difference is that we are only just beginning to get MMS (multimedia messages) now, which the Japanese have had for a while...

I spent a year in the the US, and one of the biggest differences for me was that not everyone had cellphones. I remember spending an entire night by myself, missing out on whatever was happening because I just wasn't used to a mobile phone-less life. I spent that night cursing the Americans for being so "backwards"... :)

So this isn't the future, it's the present, at least where I am.

Re:Taboos through the ages...

[Anonymous Coward]

Another interesting post from the man himself. Here's a little more information on Eric Krout, the man who you know as $$$$$exyGal.

He's been posting here for quite some time, and has seemed to take pride in manipulating users on Slashdot for the duration of his visit. Not that he picks any particularly intelligent method of doing so..in the past, his actions consisted mainly of rehashing quotes, or entire posts from other users, modifying them by a few words and reposting them under the same thread for karma points. As a related example of his startling unoriginality, feel free to view a cached copy of his webpage (http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:I697VZxlipwC: listen.to/ek+eric+krout&hl=en&ie=UTF-8), in which he modifies an article from The Onion by a few words and plasters it onto his front page. These days his webpage contains very little, save for a copy of Webalizer to keep track of whoever might be stumbling onto his website address.

Lately he's also taken to calling himself $$$$$exyGal. He does somewhat less trolling this time around, instead preferring to collect karma points and friends on his list. He's still just as much of a braggart and a fan-whore as he used to be (see the user information of ekrout for an example, in which he even compares his list of fans/friends to that of other popular users..sound familiar?), save for that he now claims to be of the opposite gender. He recently also created the account Anti$$$$$exy in an effort to throw people off his trail, pretending that he had "resolved" the issue of his supposed gender with a user that magically appeared in the midst of the argument. Since that point, Anti$$$$$exy doesn't seem to have posted any of the supposed evidence he has, or anything at all for that matter.

Don't support Eric Krout, or any of his other accounts. He enjoys making you look stupid. Don't give him that opportunity.

"Required" email

[technomom]

I just filled out form for a week-long drama camp for my son. The entry field for "email address" was REQUIRED. That's the first time I've seen a required email address for something that was not an electronic order or membership.

JoAnn

For what it's worth

[Asahi Super Dry]

I lived in Japan for a year and I can verify that you pretty much need a cell phone if you want to conduct any sort of social life. It's a kind of ritual to exchange numbers very shortly after meeting a new person: you'd slip right through the cracks without a cell phone. And as has been posted elsewhere, text messaging completely overshadows voice conversations in terms of frequency of use/effectiveness. After you get used to it you can type quicker than you might think on the keypad (though somehow it seems that Japanese is a little better suited to that sort of entry). Their phones are also years ahead of what's available in the US.