At last and alas, the end is getting in sight. I have become progressively more silent on this blog, as I was busy finishing my PhD dissertation, and doing other things, like writing/curating/organizing for The Mobile City. I am just back from Shanghai, China, where Martijn and I have been organizing an event about urban design and the hybrid city (in cooperation with Virtueel Platform). More about this soon on The Mobile City’s weblog.
The table of contents of the dissertation is as follows (slight changes still possible…):
Moving Circles: mobile media and playful identities
Michiel de Lange
Foreword
Background, reflections & acknowledgements
Chapter 0. Foreplay: What is this dissertation about?
Chapter 1. Setting the stage: mobile media, narrative identity, and play
1.1 Understanding mobile media technologies
1.1.1 Four dimensions of mobile media
1.1.2 Approaches to the relation between technology and identity
1.1.3 What is ‘mobile’ about mobile media?
1.2 The storytelling self: narrative identity
1.2.1 Idem and ipse identity
1.2.2 Threefold mimesis
1.2.3 Narrative identity: character and promise
1.3 In search of play
1.3.1 Play and games: the classics
1.3.2 Game, play, playability and playfulness
1.3.3 Communicative play
1.3.4 Play as mediating metaphors: life as play
1.4 Connecting media and play
1.4.1 Media ambiguities
1.4.2 Pleasure, humor, and joking
1.4.3 Media as playful learning spaces
1.4.4 Outline of the play framework
Chapter 2. Entering the stage: mobile media and modernity in Jakarta
2.1 Handphone mania in Indonesia
2.2 The shaping of modernity in urban Jakarta
2.2.1 Jakarta’s metropolitan setting
2.2.2 Jakarta as the center of the modern nation
2.2.3 Unity in diversity?
2.3 From old media to new media: a short media history of Indonesia
2.3.1 From old media…
2.3.2 …To new media
2.3.3 Physical nodes of new media
2.3.4 New media’s new modernity
2.4 The ‘production’ of the handphone
2.4.1 Market and numbers
2.4.2 Wartel as precursors to mobile telephony
2.4.3 CDMA technology: bridging high-tech and low-tech
2.4.4 The ‘design’ of the mobile phone
Chapter 3. Playing the stage: mobile media, mobility and identity in Jakarta
3.1 From gengsi to gaul: how to become a proper handphone user
3.1.1 Handphone gengsi
3.1.2 Handphone gaul
3.2 Three handphone mobilities
3.2.1 Corporeal mobility
3.2.2 Socio-economic mobility
3.2.3 Imaginative mobility
3.3 Moving forward: contesting modernities
3.3.1 Conceptualizing place: locality and the global
3.3.2 Spatializing identities
3.3.3 Contesting mobile media modernity
3.3.4 Reconciling differences
Chapter 4. Locating the media: mobile media and urban plays
4.1 In search of locative media
4.1.1 Location-based technologies
4.1.2 Locative media practices
4.1.3 Locative media classification
4.2 The city and the media
4.2.1 What is a city? Three approaches
4.2.2 The media city, or the death of the city?
4.2.3 Mobile media as interfaces to hybrid space
4.2.4 Why the city?
4.3 Bliin: A locative playground in hybrid space
4.3.1 A playground for boundary play
4.3.2 Playing with spatio-temporal boundaries
4.3.3 Playing with social boundaries
4.3.4 Playing with boundaries of the self
4.3.5 One more thing: the end of serendipity?
Chapter 5. Playing the media: the playful qualities of mobile media
5.1 Play on the mobile
5.1.1 Casual games
5.1.2 Pervasive games
5.1.3 Mobile play interfaces
5.2 Play with the mobile
5.2.1 Toys
5.2.2 Mobile agôn: mastery, competition and pleasure
5.2.3 Mobile alea: fate, chance, and surprise
5.2.4 Mobile mimicry: creativity, pretense, fun; and the conditional order
5.2.5 Mobile ilinx: disorientation, thrill-seeking, and escape
5.3 Play through the mobile
5.3.1 From Kula to mobile gifting
5.3.2 Types of mobile gifts
5.3.3 Differences between old and new gifting
5.4 Play by the mobile
5.4.1 Tyrannies of choice and speed; colonization of private and public life
5.4.2 New power mechanisms: from surveillance to sousveillance, identity profiling
5.4.3 Ontological doubt and ludification: between cynicism and engagement
Chapter 6. Playing the self: narrative and playful identities
6.1 What narrative does not tell: play critique on narrative identity theory
6.1.1 Narrative’s closed circularity and sedentary ethics
6.1.2 Narrative’s simplified view of culture
6.1.3 Narrative’s neglect of spatiality and becoming
6.1.4 From narrative reference and representation to playful conditional performances
6.2 The story, the mobile, and the play: linking narrative and playful identities
6.2.1 Play1: prefiguring life as play and game
6.2.2 Play2: configuring life as play and game
6.2.3 Play3: reconfiguring life as play and game
Replay (summary): mobile media and playful identities
Afterword
Appendix
Literature
Propositions
