Hi, this is my first post to the blog. I'm Steve, one of the PhD researchers at INCITE. I'm researching how people 'do' digital photography, in particular, 'branded' digital photography. Digital photography and brands come (largely) already configured by designers, marketers, advertisers and other producers and mediators, but what happens when they get into the worlds of consumers? (I don't think I've ever been so concise in describing my research....:)
Anway, I just wanted to pick up on something Sian said on Friday 24 Oct. She says that using mobile phones may make us 'less mobile' in the sense that the world comes to us. But I'm thinking of a 'rule of virtuality' picked up on by Steven Woolgar (2002): "the more virtual, the more real", which means that the use of virtual technologies can actually stimulate more real (non electronically mediated) activities. So what non electronically mediated activities do mobile phones stimulate? The world may come to us, but do mobile phones also stimulate more of us 'going to the world'? For example, when I interviewed gay men a couple of years ago, I found out that some of them had been given mobile numbers of people they hadn't met, by friends. They text messaged them, which sometimes led to meetings.