MOBILE COMMUNICATION RESOURCES

This handbook aims to convey in manageable form recent thinking and research on the social aspects of mobile communication. No handbook especially one that addresses a subject as vast as the way three billion or so people use an endlessly flexible technology can include all related topics. Neither can those that are included be necessarily dealt with to the depth that one might wish. These are the cruel realities that face any editor, and must be resolved in a way that cannot always be to everyone’s satisfaction.

My choice of topics has been guided by the overarching idea that mobile communication
has become mainstream even while it remains a subject of fascination in usage Configurations and social consequences. As such, the handbook aims at examining the
way mobile communication is fitting into and altering social processes in many places
around the globe and at many levels within society. In essence, then, it presents a series of analyses of how the reality of being mobile and in communication with distant information and personal resources affects daily life. Of course, with more than a third of all humans in the world operating under such conditions, it is hard to make precise claims that are at once manifestly universal and useful. Yet, as the chapters in this volume demonstrate, there are some remarkably consistent changes in personal routines and social organization as a result of literally putting mobile communication resources into the hands of people.

The contributors show how mobile communication profoundly affects the tempo,
structure, and process of daily life. Topics discussed include
• who is integrated into mobile communication networks and why.

• how social networks are created and sustained by mobile communication.

• how mobile communication fits into an array of communication strategies including

• he Internet and face-to-face.

• the way traditional forms of social organization are circumvented or reinvented to suit the needs of the increasingly mobile user.

• how quickly miraculous technologies become ordinary and even necessary.

• how ordinary technology becomes mysterious, extraordinary, and even miraculous.
• the symbolic uses of mobile communication beyond mere content.

• the uses of mobile communication in political organizing and social protest, and in marshaling resources.