Telephone:%20Bell%20to%20Cellphones

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Telephone Bell to Cellphones
IS146 Foundations of New Media

• Prof. Marc Davis, Prof. Peter Lyman, and danah
  boyd
• UC Berkeley SIMS
• Tuesday and Thursday 200 pm 330 pm
• Spring 2005
• http//www.sims.berkeley.edu/academics/courses/is1
  46/s05/

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Lecture Overview

• Administrivia
• Review of Last Time
• How a Telephone and Telephone Network Work
• Today
• The Telephone from Bell to Cellphones
• Guest Lecturer Genevieve Bell
• Preview of Next Time
• Social Uses of Mobile Phones

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Lecture Overview

• Administrivia
• Review of Last Time
• How a Telephone and Telephone Network Work
• Today
• The Telephone from Bell to Cellphones
• Guest Lecturer Genevieve Bell
• Preview of Next Time
• Social Uses of Mobile Phones

4
Check-in

• Questions? Concerns?
• danahs office hours
• 5-6PM today in South Hall 303A

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Readings for Next Time

• Mizuko Ito and Daisuke Okabe. Technosocial
  Situations Emergent Structurings of Mobile Email
  Use. 2003, p.1-30.
• (scan) Cheskin Research. The Wireless Future - A
  Look at Youth Unplugged. Redwood Shores,
  California Cheskin Research. 2001, p.1-32.
• Discussion Questions ??
• We will also do Discussion Questions for Salen
  Zimmerman on Tuesday

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Lecture Overview

• Administrivia
• Review of Last Time
• How a Telephone and Telephone Network Work
• Today
• The Telephone from Bell to Cellphones
• Guest Lecturer Genevieve Bell
• Preview of Next Time
• Social Uses of Mobile Phones

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Information Theory

• Quantitatively studies information flow how
  people send and receive information
• Meaning is irrelevant to information
• Information measures uncertainty
• Quantification of stimuli / signals
• Measure of freedom in decision making
• Noise is interference in the signal
• Fun is struggle against noise and uncertainty

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Lecture Overview

• Administrivia
• Review of Last Time
• How a Telephone and Telephone Network Work
• Today
• The Telephone from Bell to Cellphones
• Guest Lecturer Genevieve Bell
• Preview of Next Time
• Social Uses of Mobile Phones

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America Calling

• Claude Fischer
• Sociologist at Berkeley
• Studies social networks of people
• America Calling A Social History of the
  Telephone to 1940
• Historical sociological approach
• Question the business and techno-centric
  histories of the telephone, challenge assumptions
  about the phones role

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Telephone as Savior

• Increased social solidarity from family to
  occupation/taste culture
• Eliminate spatial divide in society
• Force for democracy (no central authority for
  communication)
• Enrich social ties - a nation of neighbors
• Help rural people overcome isolation
• (All speculations)

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Telephone as Destroyer

• Weakens local community
• Creation of alert, tense, speedy frame
• Make people expect immediacy
• Disrupt the private, domestic sphere
• Or discourage people from engaging in the public
• Dismembered voices
• (All speculations)

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Fischers Project

• Diffusion who adopted the telephone?
• When? Where? How? Why? For what ends? To
  what uses?
• Not about impacts or effects
• Integration of phone into daily life
• Where in regular activities?
• How do people use it?
• What can we infer about its social role?

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The Telephone in America

• History of telephone, pieced together through old
  documents (mostly PR material)
• Valuable for considering assumptions based on
  what you now know about the phone
• Highlights
• Assumed to be business tool (physicians were
  among earliest adopters)
• Economic tensions played a critical role
• Party lines vehicle for mass adoption

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Lecture Overview

• Administrivia
• Review of Last Time
• How a Telephone and Telephone Network Work
• Today
• The Telephone from Bell to Cellphones
• Guest Lecturer Genevieve Bell
• Preview of Next Time
• Social Uses of Mobile Phones

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Genevieve Bell

• Genevieve Bell is a Senior Researcher within
  Intel Research. She is a member of Peoples and
  Practices Research an interdisciplinary team of
  research social scientists and designers embedded
  within Intel's advanced research and development
  labs. Since joining Intel, Bell has conducted
  ethnographic research in a variety of consumer
  spaces, including malls, retail districts, and
  museums, as well as within a range of different
  American households. Bell has also conducted
  significant research beyond the US, including a
  five-country, strategically situated,
  ethnographic study of European domestic spaces
  for several Intel product groups, and a study of
  the emerging middle classes in China and India.
  She is particularly interested in issues of
  cultural difference as they are expressed around
  technology adoption and use.
• Bell has recently completed a three year research
  project focused on gaining a better understanding
  of the ways in which cultural practices in urban
  Asia are shaping people's relationships to new
  information and communication technologies. As
  part of this project, she has conducted
  ethnographic fieldwork in 7 Asian countries,
  encompassing 100 households in 17 different
  cities. Insights gained from this project have
  shaped product offerings, investment decisions
  and strategic planning at Intel.
• Prior to joining Intel in 1998, Bell taught
  anthropology and Native American Studies at
  Stanford University. Bell received her BA/MA in
  anthropology from Bryn Mawr College in
  Pennsylvania in 1991. She earned a PhD in
  cultural anthropology from Stanford University in
  1998. She is working on a book based on her
  fieldwork in Asia.

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Genevieve Bell

• No slides available from Genevieves talk

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Lecture Overview

• Administrivia
• Review of Last Time
• How a Telephone and Telephone Network Work
• Today
• The Telephone from Bell to Cellphones
• Guest Lecturer Genevieve Bell
• Preview of Next Time
• Social Uses of Mobile Phones