costis dallas (2006) socio-cultural aspects of the emerging mobile communication society

8/8/2019 Costis Dallas (2006) Socio-cultural aspects of the emerging mobile communication society

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2006 Costis Dallas . Some rights reserved.

and PDAs as a powerful means for enhancing the experience of the publicwithin the arts, heritage and tourism sector. Among the couple of dozen otherareas we looked at were agents and avatars, personalisation, RFID devicesand smart tags, innovative human-computer interfaces, semantic web tech-

nologies, virtual and enhanced reality solutions. We focussed on providingdefinitions, on establishing what the state of the art was in each particulartechnology areas, on identifying innovative existing practice and on derivingforesight scenarios from experts in each field.1

Our choice of mobile technologies among these selected topics was not acci-dental. Mobile computing applications appeared in the field of culture almostas early as the appearance of the first mobile devices in the mid-1990s. Thenotion of providing enhanced, interactive, location-aware, multimedia accessto augmented resources via a handheld device, through orientation and

learning support services to museum visitors, emerged a natural develop-ment from the tradition of human guides and docents in visitor attractions,combined with the long-existing technology of audio-guides and the morerecent forays of cultural institutions into interactive, hand-on exhibits. Solu-tions such as the Sotto Voce application developed by HP for guiding visitorsat the Filioli historic house, the Rememberer developed for the San FranciscoExploratorium, the Worldboard solution of the University of Indiana, installedin the local Mathers Museum of World Cultures, CIMIs Handscape project,led by Cornell University HCI lab and involving several US museums suchas Field Museum and the Smithsonian Institute, and Glasgow Universitys

Equator, developed for the local Lighthouse Centre for Architecture and com-bining a handheld device with ultrasound location sensing, virtual environ-ments and hypermedia technologies, were greeted as important develop-ments of the last few years. Current practice by established leaders in thefield, such as the Tate Modern, and the San Francisco Museum of ModernArt, involve renting out specially configured wireless-enabled PDAs, withvarying multimediality, interaction and location-awareness abilities, and areproducing lively debate between innovators and luddites in the museumfield.

However, as is noted in the Digicult technology watch report, in contrast tothe use of audio guides or other specialised devices which typically requiredto be maintained by the cultural heritage institutions and were borrowed bythe visitors, new mobile devices are often owned by the visitors themselves.This may bring a radical change in the way heritage institutions think aboutformulating and financing their technology strategies. And, should I add,also a radical change in the types of interactions and services made possible,as each individual will be accessible through his or her own personal mobile

1 Ross, S., Donnelly, M. & Dobreva, M. (2004) Mobile access to cultural information resources. In

Digicult Forum(2004) Technology Watch Report, 2, 91-118.


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communication device, combining, apart from voice communications, capa-bilities of text and multimedia messaging, Bluetooth networking, an embed-ded camera, and the ability to run push applications.

This point is fundamental, and not limited to the field of culture and the artsfrom which we started our exploration. We already see a significant increasein the market of personal devices that combine mobile telephony, networkingaccess, and significant computing and storage capacity to allow the deploy-ment of sophisticated information and communication services. Without un-derestimating the hard work still needed before significant issues of perform-ance, scalability, quality of service and security are overcome, one cannot help

but sense that our current ability to conceptualise, design and develop solu-tions that make justice to what is possible, already lags behind the currentcapabilities of the technology.

Well-known network society theorist and professor of the University ofSouthern California Manuel Castells introduced, in a recent ground-breakingreport funded by the Annenberg Foundation, the notion of the mobile commu-nication society.2 Castells research team investigated a global perspective ofquantitative and qualitative data, exploring trends of social use of wirelesscommunication technologies in Europe, America and Asia Pacific, their find-ings concerned, among other things, "the deep connection between wirelesscommunication and the emergence of youth culture, the transformation oflanguage by texting and multimodalty, the growing importance of wirelesscommunication in socio-political mobilization, and changes in the practice of

time and space resulting from wireless communication." They illustrate, no-tably, the trend towards saturating time with social interaction - through theuse of mobile devices - when all other practices cannot be conducted (as inqueue waiting or during travel); the prevalence of affective - related to feel-ings - rather than instrumental use of texting; the significance of SMS messag-ing and mobile phones in recent political campaigning in Korea and the Phil-ippines; the prevalence of content-driven mobile platforms, such as DoCoMoand i-mode in the Far East; the increasingly blurred context of mobile deviceuse, including, apart from interpersonal communication, image taking andsending, audio retrieving and playing, and data transmission; and, on thewhole, the emergence of a "nomadic way of life", whereby the actual locationof social actors is not anymore a determining factor for communication prac-tices, and the whole notion of social time and space is altered.

2 Castells M, Fernandez-Ardevol M, Qiu JL, Sey A. 2006. The Mobile Communication Society: A cross-

cultural analysis of available evidence on the social uses of wireless communication technology. An-

nenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

(http://arnic.info/WirelessWorkshop/MCS.pdf).


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Intriguing recent experiments appear to support the intuitions of ManuelCastell's study. The Social Tapestries research project, led by London consul-tancy Provoscis in close association with London School of Economics Mediaand Communications department, and a host of other partners, develops

experimental uses of public authoring to demonstrate the social and cultural benefits of local knowledge sharing enabled by new mobile technologies.The two software prototypes developed by the project as part of the UrbanTapestries platform one for mobile phones, the other for wireless-enabledPDAs were tested in public trials in order to investigate the potential use ofmobile technology beyond the narrow consumption and consumerism strait-

jacket. By means of providing capabilities of spatial annotation and public-collaborative authoring, the experiment verified the potential of mobile tech-nologies to provide users with an modified, and in some ways, richer experi-ence of space. This richer notion of space goes beyond a narrow definition ofx-y coordinates location to include topographical, social and cultural infor-mation, as well as indications of human presence as manifested by other us-ers traces, or by sound maps of one's own experience. 3

Social Tapestries researchers looked into scenarios in the field of education,community arts and regeneration, social housing, and local government.Similar to Castells view, and enriched by cultural and social research bywriters such as Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau and Guy Debord, theyfocus on the idea of a new kind of nomadic social experience, whereby peo-ple's interactions move across physical and social space, and on the need to

provide significantly differentiated technologies which will support a "no-madic way of life" one that is not confined, anymore, to adventurers orvagabonds, but which typifies the social and professional experience of alarge number of people at a time of increased work mobility, internationaltravel, urban consumerism and fluid social and economic bonds. The questfor identity and locality, which goes together with globalisation, adds yet an-other dimension to the nature of this "nomadic way of life".

The conviction that mobile communication technologies will have profoundimplications on a wide spectrum of social practices is echoed by the Demosthink-tank in their "London Calling report, published in 2003: they envisagea world whereby mobile phones will be used to store passenger smartcardcredits usable in public transport; whereby in-car guidance systems will beenhanced with local knowledge about places, services and facilities; wherebycitizens will increasingly use mobile phone cameras for security and crimereduction, and will be able to transmit such information to the authorities in

3 Lane G. (2003) Urban Tapestries: Wireless networking, public authoring and social knowledge. In

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, pp. 169-75; Lane G. Social tapestries: public authoring and civil

society. In Provoscis Cultural Snapshots, 9, pp. 1-9 (http://proboscis.org.uk/publications/

SNAPSHOTS_socialtapestries.pdf).


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real time; whereby wireless note-taking will help medical stuff reduce pa-perwork; whereby education will be enhanced by the capacity of mobile de-vices to serve interactive multimedia content in real-time, and will allowmore direct and frequent communication between students and parents; and,

whereby the tourist experience will be revolutionised by the ability of mobiledevices to help reduce queuing in attractions, book tickets, and push relevantlocation-based information to users.4

There is a significant amount of work needed, focussing on the issues emerg-ing from the increasing importance of intangible assets and their manage-ment by companies and organisations. It is important to recognise the in-creased importance of ICT-based solutions for helping organisations achieve

business and organisational goals, and of conceptualising, designing and de-ploying such solutions as knowledge portals, sophisticated call centres, and

analytical CRM applications. Such solutions, however, should not be seen asisolated, self-sufficient means. On the contrary, ICT solutions should beviewed as part of a wider, socio-technical system. Given the massive penetra-tion of mobile devices, and the profound implications of their social use,noted above, advances in mobile and wireless computing should be takenonboard as tools for providing better services to organisations, and thus formaximising the utility of their intangible assets. In fact, the areas of mobile,location-aware, wireless solutions are an important pillar in a cutting edgetechnology solutions offering, together with knowledge web applications andrelationship management solutions. Driven by a public-centric, user-laden

approach, one may envisage a future where services across the intangible as-sets management spectrum are integrated seamlessly with applications de-livered via mobile information devices.

In the field of tourism communication, for instance, I recently led a team toconceptualise and design a content-rich, XML-based, WAP and mobile Inter-net portal, accessible from small screen devices such as web-enabled PDAsand mobile phones the first service of this kind in Greece, hosted by the na-tional rural tourism agency Agrotouristiki.5 In a typical scenario, a tourist onthe way to Cyclades, Crete or the central Peloponnese is able, in only a fewsteps, to select her area of interest on her mobile phone, get a listing of alter-native tourism hostels or farms, call them directly from the phone, and getadditional information about cultural and natural spots of interest. If shewishes, she can supply her mobile phone number, so that the system cansend updates and provide personalised information.

The system contains real-world information, but it is available only to mobilephone owners with a data connection and WAP or web-enabled devices. We

4 McCarthy H & Miller P. (2003)London Calling. London: Demos.

5 Accessible at http://mobile.agrotravel.gr..


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are still scratching the surface of the possibilities: wouldn't it be good, for in-stance, if the system could use the actual location of a visitor to provide himwith locally-relevant information, foregoing the need for selecting location?In addition, wouldn't it be nice if, on arrival, users could be called back by a

system to be provided by an audio introduction to what a historic place orother point of interest has to offer? And, wouldn't it be great if the same mo-

bile phone could be used by people to capture photos or short videos of ac-tual places and post them by a single click to the information system, forfriends to access? And this is only in this particular field of tourism: onecould equally think of ways in which blended learning and training, as wellas on-the-job training, could be revolutionised by the use of mobile devices;or, by new mechanisms to support collaborative work, sharing personal andgroup information, and enabling better interaction between remote co-workers, using such technologies. I have the feeling that we are on the way tosuch developments as will allow such functionalities, and more.

For public organisations, companies and even individuals, technologies arewhat anthropologists call "extra-somatic means of adaptation" to changingneeds. In the current stage of a post-industrial, knowledge-driven economyand society, it becomes evident that technologies evolve to support ever-increasing degrees of embeddedness and mobility - represented, respectively,

by the sectors of pervasive computing and mobile computing, deemed tomerge, within the foreseeable future, within a unified vision of ubiquitous,ambient intelligence. A socio-cultural approach, addressing the social and

cultural communication aspects of emerging technologies, may be an essen-tial element for a successful deployment of this vision.

costis dallas (2006) socio-cultural aspects of the emerging mobile communication society

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