Dutch broadcaster VARA’s digital television channel ConsumentenTV has an item (in Dutch) about future visions of the telephone. I am one of the people interviewed for this program. From their announcement:

De mobiele telefoon is niet meer weg te denken uit ons dagelijks leven. We bellen en sms-en ons een ongeluk, veel mensen gebruiken daarnaast internet op hun mobiel, luisteren muziek en kijken films via het apparaatje. Dat wij allemaal een eigen, of zelf meerdere telefoons in ons bezit zouden hebben, had men honderd jaar geleden niet durven dromen: Toekomstvisies over telefonie.

Watch the program on demand >>

Dutch digital channel Uitzendinggemist has a number of ‘Micromovies‘ especially for the mobile screen. You can watch them via the application made for mobile phones. 

Many of the movies are made by mobile phones and address some aspect of mobile phones.

In the movie Death Valley the theme of solitude is displayed. This desert is one of the few places where there is no cellular signal.
 

Or the movie ‘Over en Uit’ about being called in a public place, and hearing some very disturbing news…

It is nice to see some more attention for mobile phone movies as an emerging genre.

Here is a great case of mobile phones playing a role in mass media reports, and their ‘playful’ characteristics in story-telling:

Last Friday, December 19 2008, prime minister of Belgium Yves Leterme and his entire cabinet stepped down as an indirect result of the financial crisis. The mobile phone played a pivotal role in both the prelude, as well as in the media reports about this event. How did it all start? When Belgium bank Fortis was split up, many small-scale shareholders were left with virtually worthless shares. They went to court and successfully prevented the transfer to BP Paribas. However, in a 6-page report which became public on Friday afternoon, Belgium’s supreme court wrote that members of the government had tried to influence the outcome of the case. It appeared that Belgian prime minister Yves Leterme was in direct contact with the spouse of one of the judges who leaked information about the proceedings of the case through the mobile phone. With this information Leterme was able to brief the government lawyers on a defence strategy.

Now, this is already an interesting case of how the mobile phone is used to connect supposed separate worlds. But it gets better. The mobile phone also plays a crucial role in the way these events are being reported in mass media [1]. As soon as the report comes out, the government is summoned to the parliament. It does not take long before the minister of justice resigns. It remains uncertain what Leterme is going to do. In front of the camera of Belgium national television station VRT1, one of the members of opposition wonders why he hasn’t received an SMS yet announcing the resignation of Leterme himself. At 17:10 reporter Peter Vandermeersch from Belgium newspaper De Standaard breaks in on the live news report (see pictures). He has received an SMS from an “exceptionally dependable source” claiming that Leterme had proposed the resignation of the whole government. Another reporter is interviewing indignified members of the opposition. Just a few minutes later Vandermeersch is cut back into the broadcast. Glancing at the cellphone in his hand, he withdraws his earlier statement and instead says he hears “from sources near the prime minister” that the government still hasn’t fallen but only proposed to resign. The Dutch commentator’s voice says that different parties appear to send text messages with their own version of what is going on to VRT reporters. Again reporter Vandermeersch appears on screen, concluding with an ironic smile that the different parties are “spinning” this issue. He has received by SMS yet another version of the story, stating that the prime minister does not want to resign at all. Vandermeersch concludes “we are almost physically co-experiencing what is happening a few buildings further”, immediately followed by a remark of the other reporter “if it weren’t so dramatical, we might call it a soap”. Finally we see Vandermeersch for the fourth time. It is then 17:56. He is glaring at his cellphone, saying once more that from an “exceptionally dependable source” he has received the following text, and starts to read from his phone screen a message that seems to be written in very official language, stating the entire government has offered its resignation to the Belgium king. After the report is over, the presenter of Dutch actuality program Nova remarks on the item that “the Belgium government crisis unfolds by SMS”. A bit later she calls the affair of the minister of justice, who first stepped down, a “Shakespearian drama”. This term is later repeatedly used by the director of Belgium newspaper De Morgen in his reaction to the affair in Nova.

Why is this interesting? First, mobile phones are used to uncover and report backstage affairs from court and parliament directly to the outside world. Not only has a judge leaked inside information to the outside world, also members of the parliament leaked via SMS to the press what was being discussed inside. Second, because of this mode of reporting directly from the cellphone screen, the events are narrated as an ongoing sequence of events without much overall coherence. As a result, the whole affair is understood as being “like a soap” and a “Shakespearian drama”. Indeed this is a very apt description. The instant updates, the sequential way of ongoing story-telling (“and then.. and then..”), and the sudden and dramatic plot turns are all very soap-like. Moreover, the journalist at some point becomes acutely aware of the fact that he was being played (“spinned”) by the different political parties which all texted their own version of the events. Politics as theatre, mobile phones as tool for play and being played, great stuff for the ‘playful identities’ thesis.

[1] The following description is largely based on a television special on the issue by Dutch actuality program Nova on Friday December 19 2008, which in turn is largely compiled from live reports by Belgium national television VRT1.

what: Studium Generale symposium “De popcultuur ontgonnen”

where: Zaal B-3, Woudestein, Rotterdam

time: 11 november 2008 15:30 – 17:30

who: dr. Stef Aupers (socioloog FSW), dr. Tonny Krijnen (communicatiewetenschapper FHKW), drs. Michiel de Lange (cultureel antropoloog FW) en dr. Bart Barendrecht (cultureel antropoloog Universiteit Leiden). Prof. dr. Ton Bevers (socioloog FHKW) fungeert als co-referent en stelt kritische vragen. Moderatie: prof.dr. Dick Houtman (bijzonder hoogleraar cultuursociologie FSW). Organized by Niels van Poecke.

An interesting question raised by Wired Magazine’s Gadget Lab (Via Textuality): “Is Text Messaging Making Subtitles Popular?”

According to Actress Kristin Scott Thomas, the ubiquity of text messaging means that subtitled movies could gain acceptance. Granted, this is an extrapolation of one throwaway comment in a New York Times interview, but it does make an interesting point.

People will now go to films with subtitles, you know. They’re not afraid of them. It’s one of the upsides of text-messaging and e-mail. Maybe the only good thing to come of it.

People read a lot of on-screen text. You’re doing it now. I read thousands of words a day to bring these posts to you. We all read messages on tiny telephone screens. So our brains are trained for it. But does this translate to subtitles?

An interesting thought about the way mobile phones influence literacy. Often referring to Walter Ong’s work, a recurring question has been whether the mobile phone should be understood as supporting oral or literate culture. It has been claimed that mobile phones are closer to ‘oral culture’, even ushering in an age of ‘seconday orality‘. Voice calls of course increase the importance of speech in communication and information transfer, while text messaging is ‘oral’ since it takes on the characteristics of spoken language. SMS language is seen as a kind of ‘written speech’ with its colloquialisms and slang, lack of interpunction, abbreviations, lack of temporal permanence, etc. (See e.g. the work of Naomi S. Baron about linguistic aspects of the mobile phone).

However small the evidence of this example, it suggests that mobile phones cannot be easily classified purely as a technology of oral culture. Even if the argument about mobile phones and secondary orality could be made with force, literacy may increase in other domains. This ’seeping through’ of mobile phone literacy into other media domains is visible in Indonesia where I did fieldwork. Bart Barendregt has written about the way SMS language is incorporated into Malaysian-style pantun poetry. And I have noticed a strong literary interest in Indonesia with many new books being published targeted at young people. Not ‘old fashioned’ literature but a new kind of ‘teenage novels’ published by new players such as Gagas Media. These books are very cheap and very accessible because the language is playful and connects to the lives of urban young people. There are many crossovers in media. Gagas Media has tried doing songlit: creating soundtracks from literature and popularizing this via sinetron (hugely popular Indonesian soap series). According to an article in Indonesian newspaper Kompas (Aug 6 2007 p. 39) dedicated to this phenomenon, some readers (mostly female) have even started “groupie weblogs” about this new type of literature, like one with the motto “fun to write and read”.

In Indonesia at least I think there is a crossover between old and new media and genres, with the playfulness of SMS language being adopted in the literary style of books. I’m not sure the notions of either orality or literacy suffice to understand these convergences.

== Update: Stephan Barmentloo at the Masters of Media weblog says micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter) should be seen as a kind of secondary literacy, and raises the question about the possible detrimental influence this could have on our ability to read and have ‘deeper thoughts’ for critical thinking. This is an example – I would reply – of the kind of one-sided argument you get when you solely look at at new media as devoid of cultural context or embeddedness in a broader configuration of media (both ‘old’ and ‘new’).

This seems to underline what many studies have already shown: the importance of the mobile phone in general and text messages in particular for young people’s social identities. Text messages are sweet little reminders of the people who matter, portable and accesible at any moment, like amulets. But is this any different for older people?

The researchers also looked at the practice of mobile sharing:

“There is a growing trend of sharing with teenagers. Phones are more and more objects that circulate within a group, in particular when they have lost their own phone, when it is broken or stolen. The Gripic researchers were surprised to find that a fair number of teenagers didn’t even have their own mobile phone, but just a “replacement mobile”: an object that was ephemeral, non-sacred, cheap and aimed at circulation. The only thing that matters is that it works.” [...]

“In fact, for adults the mobile is a hyper-personal device, an intimate black box with data that absolutely need to be protected. For teenagers on the other hand, the mobile is often as little confidential and intimate as their blogs. They are instead identity and exhibition spaces of oneself, with “museum galleries” of photos, ringtones, videos, and music to share with a community of peers: archiving makes only sense if it can be shared.”

Gripic sees teenager usage of the mobile no longer as “emblematic of an individualistic society”, but rather as “a reflection of collective and collaborative behaviours”.

(English translation from Putting People First)

This supports the idea of gift exchange through the mobile phone, written about by amongst others Taylor & Harper (and by me).

Another interesting finding is that young people learn to use the phone by experimenting, and that they deal with glitches in a “non-dramatic” way.

(Via Small Surfaces)

The BBC reports that Cubans get access to mobile phones, as Raul Castro lifts the ban on possessing them:

Cubans are to be allowed unrestricted access to mobile phones for the first time, in the latest reform announced under new President Raul Castro.

…

Some Cubans already own mobile phones, but they have had to acquire them via a third party, often foreigners.

Cuba’s rate of cell phone usage remains among the lowest in Latin America.

Now Cubans will be able to subscribe to pre-paid mobile services under their own names, instead of going through foreigners or in some cases their work places.

However, the new service must be paid for in foreign currency, which will restrict access to wealthier Cubans.

What strikes me is not only that one of the countries with the most restrictive political regimes and lowest mobile phone penetration percentages is lifting the ban. More interesting even is the way this is presented in various media as almost inevitably leading to huge social change. This news item is phrased in terms like reform (BBC), technological catch-up (Engadget), the new Cuba; Raul Castro is revolutionizing his brother’s island; change (Wired) [my emphasis]. Perhaps the strongest phrase I found on MobileCrunch: “The communist dominos are falling as the dictatorship of the proletariat realizes it can’t stand up against the relentless momentum of the mobile phone.” Here, the mobile phone is imagined almost as a natural force, logically leading to political reform, freedom and democracy.

This reminds me of Tim Cresswell’s keynote speech in which he showed how the term ‘mobility’ is always infused with meanings and values. In this case it seems the mobile phone becomes a symbol for reform, social change, modernity, political opening and transparency. I really feel his point about the value-laden aspects of ‘mobility’ (and consequently also ‘mobile technologies’) is extremely important for all working in the field of mobile technologies. The apprehension Tim voiced in workshop 2 towards the term “mobility paradigm” perhaps also stems from the realization that a paradigm – with enough people ‘in’ it – inevitably means basic concepts (like ‘mobile’) are accepted as validation and legitimization in themselves for working on them. And yes, we too realize that “The Mobile City” has exactly this rhetorical power: a whole new view on, and approach to the city, paradoxically both inevitable as a future image and simply here & now as an empirical fact.

Dutch tech/nerd blog tweakers.net report that Hyves, Holland’s most popular social network, has struck a deal with operator KPN (the biggest telcom in NL) to add locational information to text messages Hyves users send to each other. According to KPN, questions such as “where are you?” and “what are you doing?” are often asked by mobile phone users.

KPN customers can switch the service on by first registering for this service on Hyves. Whenever they send a text message containing information about what they are currently doing to a specific number, they will be positioned on a Google Maps application within Hyves, which may be seen by other Hyves users.

This is just another step in the field of LBS (location based services) that telcoms are seemingly desperately trying to develop. LBS had been a buzzword for some time now, but the real “killer-app” hasn’t come up yet. I’m curious to see how this will develop, since these are very strong partners indeed.

Just a thought, I think questions as quoted above like “where are you?” and “what are you doing?” shouldn’t be taken too literary. We don’t really need or even want to know this information all the time. They are often just a sign of reciprocal involvement with the life of the other person, a type of mobile gift exchanges.

Moreover, part of the fun in talking through the mobile phone is also the joy of imagining what someone else is doing at the moment, and trying to picture where he or she is. It is part of the process of creating “imagined proximity” or “co-presence”. I wonder what kind of new imaginings will arise when this kind of background information is already given through location based services? If we know all this kind of stuff in advance, is there even sense in still making the actual phone call? Perhaps in an unexpected way, LBS as the chicken with the golden eggs may turn out to be a bullet in the telcoms own foot.

(source appears to be PersianHub.org).

Sad as it is, the Joran van der Sloot and Natalee Holloway case has a funny side to it. And the mobile phone plays a big role in it. More than half of the Dutch population watched the program by Peter R. de Vries on Sunday the 3rd of Februari 2008 about the confessions Joran van der Sloot made in front of hidden cameras. Shortly after the broadcast, SMS messages started circulating:

‘Lig hier op het strand met een wijf te ketsen maar in één keer deed ze niks meer! Kan je ff komen met een boot, een echte vriend doet dat toch? Mag jij mijn nieuwe gympen!’

which translates into something like:

I am on the beach humping this chick, all of a sudden she stops moving! Can you come over with a boat, a real friend would do such a thing? You can have my new sneakers!

Free newspaper De Pers quotes this joke from a barkeeper from The Hague. Another free newspaper Metro quotes the exact same joke from young people in Amsterdam. In trying to come up with a snappy answer, people refer in a similar vein to the show everybody has seen:

Sorry, geen tijd, zit op Aruba. Bel anders Daury ff.

(Sorry, no time, I am on Aruba. Call Daury.)

According to De Pers, one of the largest operators in the Netherlands Vodafone reports a remarkable increase in text messages after the Peter R. de Vries show.

Interestingly, broadcast mass media content (which still is able to reach the largest number of people) seeps into ‘narrowcast’ communication media like the mobile phone. Yet the mobile phone too is used in a chain-like broadcast medium. People send a message like this on to multiple other people.

Also, the mobile phone has become part of the repertoire of media people have to express themselves in a joking way. It has typical connotations of being non-serious and playful (especially amongst young people).

[Interesting by the way that Wikipedia.org automatically forwards the entry "Joran van der Sloot" to "Natalee Holloway"... What politics are behind that choice?]

sources: depers.nl and metronieuws.nl (date: Feb. 7 2008)

picture: depers.nl

From Always-On to Always-There (PDF – 412 KB).

On his scooter, Ramon covers all of Jakarta. He even goes to neighboring towns like Bekasi, Tangerang and Bogor (1 1/2 hours). Ramon regularly uses the handphone to communicate whether he has found any new hair, where he has to drop off, or where he can pick up. In easy times he gets about 3 calls every week. In busy times everyday.

Ramon owns his handphone since 2 years. It is not really advanced, he admits, but it does have a handsfree/audio set, and a camera. Ramon makes a lot of snapshots of all the special places he visits. He prints them out and puts them on his wall, for “kebanggaan sendiri” (personal pride). With a broad weave of the arm Ramon explains he has whole wall full of pictures. He feels he has become a kind of artist since he has got a handphone.

Together with Lisa & Dini, two girls from my rumah kos, I went to Monas (national monument) in the morning. Under a blistering sun we walked to the Istana Negara (state palace), just north of Taman Merdeka (freedom square). Along the road we saw military units parading. At the palace, young people from all current 33 provinces were present, wearing regional ethnic costumes, featuring on pictures, and busy taking pictures themselves.





Ethnic and national identities at Istana Negara. Mobile devices all over the place to capture “unity in diversity” (Indonesia’s national motto). Tradition and modernity go hand in hand.

After that, Lisa and I went to kampung Melayu, one of the poorer areas in Jakarta. Some friends of her organize a three-day series of festivities in the neighborhood of bukit duri, as part of an effort to make freedom day a real people’s festival. All kinds of traditional games here, vaguely reminding me of the kind of ludic activities that take place on Dutch “koninginnedag” (queen’s day). These kids compete to run three slippery eels from one bucket into the other as quick as possible.



Eel race in kampung Melayu. In the background an activist painting claiming the rights of poor people in Indonesia. The proclamation in the painting reads “Children of poor families are the responsibility of the state. Children at the edge [referring also literally to bukit duri’s location near the Ciliwung riverside] are not sewer rats!”. The painting is part of a campaign in the neighborhood to voice social and economic awareness and identity, as the slums are planned to be cleared due to recurrent floodings.


Pre-paid card infrastructure has penetrated deep into the kampung!

Meanwhile, a bit further uphill, young guys try to climb the greasy pole, in the hope of getting one of the handphones dangling from the top as a reward! I somehow got the sense that in this image, some central notions in my research (identity, play and the mobile phone) come together and lose some of their slipperiness…



Play in front of the quarter’s main Mesjid (mosque) on national freedom day: who wins the mobile phone?

In talking about identity, I feel like adding a more personal note. Today has also been a day to consider my own history and relation to Indonesia. A week back or so I was in a book shop at Taman Ismael Marzuki, and picked up a Soekarno (Indonesia’s first president) biography by Bob Hering. Paging through the book, I noticed my great grandfather figures as one of the prime informants. He apparently was very well-acquainted with many of the key figures who founded Indonesia, and who are commemorated today. From the scarce stories, I know he spoke several indigenous languages fluently and was part of the so called ‘ethical’ movement which tried to reform colonial rule. Yet still part of Dutch colonial system… 62 Years after Indonesian independence, I cannot help but feel both continuity, by temporarily living here and becoming close to this country, as well as rupture, for I am here in a completely different situation and role, as the paths of Holland and Indonesia have split.

New technologies like the mobile phone lead to new discussions:

from the {belajar-islam} [= "study Islam"] mailinglist: http://www.mail-archive.com/belajar-islam@yahoogroups.com/msg00092.html

Antoniobandalem wonders whether muslims are allowed to use products that are made by non-muslims (kafir), such as the handphone. He gets a reply from Chandraleka, an independent IT writer, who says something like (freely translated & abbreviated):

20 May 2006

“Wah! Don’t be too extreme! As long as the product itself is halal, it doesn’t matter who produces it. Extreme ideas like these are caused by ignorance about Islam. This idea would make modern life nearly impossible: you cannot drive a car, cannot use a computer, cannot use light bulbs, cannot use a mobile phone… Muslims are allowed to use ‘kafir’ products, thank God! It makes life much easier!”

.

In the background the Nokia service centre where you have to draw a number – how orderly!