Digital culture has undoubted already impacted in a variety of ways on contemporary life, but one of the increasingly significant developments it has ushered in relates to mediated communication ‘on the move'. Of course, as with many so-called New Media developments, this is not something wholly new; ‘old media' such as analogue radio has been handily portable for decades, and the Walkman personal stereo became a massively popular analogue device, in the 1980s, for privately listening to recorded cassette tapes in public space. Despite these sorts of precursor, it can nevertheless be argued that digital, mobile media does indeed offer a series of distinctively portable possibilities. First and foremost is the fact that ‘computer-mediated communication' (CMC), can now be utilized in ever-more mobile forms. Emails can be accessed and read while users of BlackBerries or similar devices are out and about, and wireless or ‘wi-fi' broadband coverage is becoming increasingly commonplace, at least in urban areas of high population density in the Western world. Computers, telephones, photographic media, even television and video: the long-held concept of ‘media convergence' is finally beginning to see fruition within consumer culture, and it is in the arena of mobile media where the interfaces and intersections of different media technologies are perhaps most visible.
Convergence, in this sense, is more about ‘multi-platforming', where media texts and audiences perhaps start to move almost seamlessly across different platforms such as television, online on-demand radio, podcasts, user-generated content, digital video, and so on. One of the especially intriguing things with ‘nomadic' or ‘mobile' communications is that the very concept itself has therefore become somewhat amorphous. Given that some information and communication technology (ICT) users and consumers may be accessing the same services (the web, even television and radio) via mobile, wireless devices, while others may be accessing these through (in practice) fixed-point desktop terminals in the home or workplace, or even old-fashioned television sets dealing with digital television signals, then how can we start to delimit the range and scope of ‘mobile' media? Is blogging, for example, something done sitting at a desk, or something done in situ, perhaps out on the street, standing in a doorway with a lightweight notebook and a borrowed wireless network?
Dealing with something like the mobile phone may seem the clearest option, but I would argue that it is the fuzzy edges of ‘mobile' media, where networks and services previously thought of as ‘static' are now becoming increasingly accessible on the move, where we can learn more about the possibilities of ‘nomadic' communications in digital culture. Furthermore, ‘mobile' media are not always something distinct from ‘fixed-point' digital media; increasingly, mobile digital devices - mobile phones, camera phones, iPods and the like - have been techno-culturally defined as symbiotic with consumer ‘hub' personal computers (PCs) or laptops through which digital content libraries are archived/backed-up, and through which images and captured video are uploaded to the web to be shared via social networking sites. Again, there are very fuzzy edges around the ‘mobile' or the ‘nomadic' here, as many of these technologies call for, or incite, the ‘bringing home' of ported, portable digital data to a central - possibly fixed - PC, conceptualized as the ‘storage' space or archive for files. As such, mobile digital media needs to be seen as defined in interaction and interrelationship with less self-evidently portable ICTs. In short, these areas of interest could be summed up as interrogating the ‘where', the ‘what' and the ‘who' of digital mobile media. Along with, and threaded through, thinking about these issues, I also want to flag up some of the critiques that have been made of emergent mobile digital cultures.
These concerns relate partly to the ‘always-on' nature of specific devices and networks - that is that lines between ‘work' and ‘private life' may be eroded - and partly to the use of digital communications technology in controversial youth-cultural practices such as the posting online of ‘happy slapping' videos. As with many previous ‘new' media, mobile digital devices (e.g. camera phones) have been partly interpreted as challenging old systems of power and regulation, hence allowing youth subcultures to engage in activities thought of as threatening to the social order. Though it may not be in any way possible to construct a ‘balance sheet' of cultural developments, pros and con, in this area, it does remain important not to fall into premature cultural celebration or condemnation. Digital culture is never simply ‘one thing' which can be monolithically assessed as a ‘good' or ‘bad' series of practices, and it is also fast-moving and flexible. For example, there is a fair chance that by the time this discussion sees print, it may already have been partly superseded by further media technological developments. Perhaps digital culture extends ‘planned obsolescence' and the notion of constant ‘upgrading' into habitual patterns of consumption and self-conceptualization, even in the world of academic commentary.
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