TY - JOUR

T1 - Modes of Being in Mobile Telecommunication

AU - Yoshida, Miya

PY - 2010

Y1 - 2010

N2 - In tandem with the boom in mobile media, the number of scholarly articles and essays on the social impact of the mobile phone is increasing every day. Some recent studies have expanded their focus to pay closer attention to specific social and individual uses in “developing” countries, acknowledging mobile use at different social and political levels in different regions of the world, and covering a wide range of other topics related to the mobile phone. However, much of the argument seems to follow preset lines or notions such as “seamless connectivity,” “ubiquity,” “flow” and “new subjectivities.” What do these notions actually signal to us?As can be seen in some of these examples—the so-called “iPod jack” practices of live sharing, the difficult levels of representation in the interactive theater play Call Cutta Mobile Phone Theater by Rimini Protokoll—communication technology functions as a setting that deliberately enhances subject-making processes and aims at a commodification of subjectivity. Today, individual subjectivity seems to be considered more important than ever, and has already become implicated in an economic cycle of subjectivity all its own, involved in production. In my paper, I focus on the relations of individual subjectivity and social systems. By analyzing one project in particular, Call Cutta Mobile Phone Theater, I attempt to clarify technologically enhanced modes of “being-in-space” produced through individual and collective uses of digital mobile communication.

AB - In tandem with the boom in mobile media, the number of scholarly articles and essays on the social impact of the mobile phone is increasing every day. Some recent studies have expanded their focus to pay closer attention to specific social and individual uses in “developing” countries, acknowledging mobile use at different social and political levels in different regions of the world, and covering a wide range of other topics related to the mobile phone. However, much of the argument seems to follow preset lines or notions such as “seamless connectivity,” “ubiquity,” “flow” and “new subjectivities.” What do these notions actually signal to us?As can be seen in some of these examples—the so-called “iPod jack” practices of live sharing, the difficult levels of representation in the interactive theater play Call Cutta Mobile Phone Theater by Rimini Protokoll—communication technology functions as a setting that deliberately enhances subject-making processes and aims at a commodification of subjectivity. Today, individual subjectivity seems to be considered more important than ever, and has already become implicated in an economic cycle of subjectivity all its own, involved in production. In my paper, I focus on the relations of individual subjectivity and social systems. By analyzing one project in particular, Call Cutta Mobile Phone Theater, I attempt to clarify technologically enhanced modes of “being-in-space” produced through individual and collective uses of digital mobile communication.

KW - Digital media

KW - Media and communication studies

KW - mobile communication

M3 - Journal articles

SP - 77

EP - 89

JO - Aether - The Journal of Media Geography

JF - Aether - The Journal of Media Geography

SN - 2158-6608

IS - 5

ER -