'Playful Identities' research blog » gifting

“Give yourself away…”

michiel — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:30:21 +0000

Hey, there are people inspired by me . Check out Darryl Cressman’s article about mobile gifting. Darryl is from the School of Communication, at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. He visited us with Norm Friesen a couple of weeks ago in Rotterdam.

I see my preliminary article is spreading it’s way onto the Internet (a huge link dump here about mobile phone & art). About time for me to finish the paper…

Presentation at Transito 2006

michiel — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 15:34:13 +0000

Last Friday, October 27, I did a talk for the Transito Festival 2006 at the Melkweg in Amsterdam. It was an evening about identity and technology.

Here’s the PDF of the presentation Mobile phone as gift culture (Dutch).

Mobile phones & social inclusion

michiel — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:25:56 +0000

Funny, yesterday I discussed my preliminary paper on mobile communication as gift-culture (following the well-known anthropological classic by Marcel Mauss) together with my colleague PhD students. At one point we were talking about the consequences of this gift-exchange view, whether this would mean that people not in the gift-circle (have-nots or want-nots) would be left out of the circle. I said yes, definitely. And here’s a post on textuality.org that seems to confirm this:

According to a new study, the new social outcasts are teenagers and young adults without mobile phones. The ;The Sydney Morning Herald; reports.

Mobile phones are the portals to friendships and social networks, the ultimate measure of social status and portable shrines to self-image, he says. And if no one’s calling, there’s little shame in programming your phone to ring you, checking for non-existent text messages or talking up a storm with an imaginary friend.

Katz says. “To not have a phone feels like social banishment. It really is an issue of being excluded, of being an outsider.”