Hello all,

I have an article that has come out in the December volume of Interactions of 
the ACM. The article starts to consider the way that a mobile phone is becoming 
"taken for granted." The background for the article is a comment made by Jim 
Katz who suggested that we become a problem for our friends and family if we 
are, for some reason, not available via mobile phone.

It is an idea that I then kicked around with Jonathan Donner. From there I 
wrote the piece for Interactions and then developed into the talk I gave at the 
recent AoIR conference. Now I have worked out a book proposal where I want to 
dig a bit deeper into the idea. Along the way (in my sociology persona) I have 
started to play around with the idea of applying the idea of Durkheimian social 
facts. It seems as though there is a type of social expectation associated with 
the mobile phone. That is, it is an assumed part of our kit. It follows that, 
in the eyes of others, we are somehow not observing our social expectations if 
we are not properly equipped. I think that the true Durkheimians will wrinkle 
their noses at this reapplication of the notion, but if I can get the proposal 
accepted, it will give me the chance to think through all this.

Any comments on the idea are welcome.

Rich Ling


I have also posted this on Ning at:

http://mobilesociety.ning.com/profiles/blogs/taken-for-granted-the-infusion

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