Mobile Phone vs Everything

The mobile phone is certainly becoming part of our everyday lives in the way it ‘…connects with a distinct set of social practices (like listening to music while travelling on the train or the underground, for example) which are specific to our culture or way of life’ (Goggin 2006) The mobile phone is becoming a tool that can identify you as a certain type of person. The idea of the mobile phone and the individual becoming closer is suggestive of what Faraway (1990) defined as ‘…a hybrid of machine and organism…’ a cyborg. To say that the small devices in our pockets could become part of us in the future, which seems to be in motion, makes it clear that this piece of technology will become a dominant screen in our future.

The mobile phone will undoubtedly become a dominant screen in the future but we cannot ignore other devices such as the television and computer/laptop which have much larger screens, an area in which the mobile phone is lacking in comparison. It is a simple feature, but is actually a very appealing feature amongst devices with screens. Micro-movies for the mobile are not going to replace the other physically larger screens. It cannot replace the culture provided to societies by cinema or even DVD’s at home on the television. Micro-movies seem more like a gimmicky novelty than a feature that will significantly aid the mobile phone’s dominance in the future. The television is going to advance into the future also, in that it will make the home environment more interactive with the world beyond the doorstep. These other screens are not going to be ignored to leave the mobile phone by itself in the future as the dominant screen. The mobile phone will become increasingly involved in the future but not entirely dominant.  

The way in which the mobile phone has become involved with cultures is all due to its portability; it is far less appealing without that factor, then it is just a small screen. Some of the features like movies that will become portable with the mobiles as micro-movies, cannot be experienced in the same way when compared to the device on which the experience originated from. Portable devices are advancing in parallel with their larger counter-parts, the Nintendo 3DS for example, features stereoscopic 3d which is currently ahead of the cinema’s silver screen. If 3d can be achieved from a portable device like the 3DS, then it could be a strong possibility that it will feature in mobile phones. The mobile phone certainly threatens other devices to become the dominant screen of the future.      

Goggin, G. 2006 Cell Phone Culture: Mobile Technology in Everyday Life, Routledge, New York.

Haraway D. 1991. ‘A cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century’. In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, pp. 149-89. New York: Routledge