Magic in the Air: Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social LifeJames E. Katz In this timely volume, James E. Katz, a leading authority on social consequences of communication technology, analyzes the way new mobile telecommunications affect daily life both in the United States and around the world. Magic in the Air is the most wide-ranging analysis of mobile communication to date. Katz investigates the spectrum of social aspects of the cell phone's impact on society and the way social forces affect the use, display, and re-configuration of the cell phone. Surveying the mobile phone's current and emerging role in daily life, Katz finds that it provides many benefits for the user, and that some of these benefits are subtle and even counter-intuitive. He also identifies ways the mobile phone has not been entirely positive. After reviewing these he outlines some steps to ameliorate the mobile phone's negative effects. Katz also discusses use and abuse of mobile phones in educational settings, where he finds that their use is eroding students' participation in class even as it is helping them to cheat on exams and cut class. Parents no longer object to their children having mobile phones in class in a post-Columbine and 9/11 era; instead they are pressing schools to change their rules to allow students to have their phones available during class. And mobile phone misbehavior is by no means limited to students: Katz finds that teachers are increasingly taking calls in the middle of class, even interrupting their own lectures to answer what they claim are important calls. In keeping with the book's title, Katz explores the often overlooked psychic and religious uses of the mobile phone, an area that has only recently begun to command scholarly interest. Magic in the Air will be essential reading for communications specialists, sociologists, and social psychologists. |
Contents
Spiritual | |
A Nation of Ghosts? Choreography of Mobile | |
Public Performance of Mobile | |
Mobile Phones in Educational Settings | |
The Telephone as a Medium of Faith Hope | |
Telecommunication and Information | |
Accounting for Information in Society | |
Future Communication Technology | |
Concluding Thoughts | |
Other editions - View all
Magic in the Air: Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social Life James Everett Katz No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
Aakhus Eds activities adopted allow answering machine Apparatgeist aspects BBCi become behavior Bell Cambridge camera phones cell phone century chapter choreography classroom communication devices created cultural studies economic effects electronic enhanced fashion Fordism Fortunati futuristic human identity important individual information society instance intellectual Internet James James E James Randi Jizou knowledge Leopoldina lives magic Manuel Castells Mark Aakhus meaning Merce Cunningham mobile communication technology mobile devices mobile phone users mobile technology modern Motorola Nokia numbers Passagen Verlag percent Perpetual contact personal communication technology perspective phone booth physical political post-industrial society present production public performance public space relationships religious reports Retrieved role sense September 11 social interaction spiritual status suggest Sugiyama survey symbolic telecommunication television text messages themes theory traditional Transaction Publishers University Press World Trade Center York