2005.03.03 SLIDE 1IS146 – SPRING 2005

Telephone: Bell to Cellphones

Prof. Marc Davis, Prof. Peter Lyman, and danah boyd

UC Berkeley SIMS

Tuesday and Thursday 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Spring 2005http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/academics/courses/is146/s05/

IS146:

Foundations of New Media

2005.03.03 SLIDE 2IS146 – SPRING 2005

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

2005.03.03 SLIDE 3IS146 – SPRING 2005

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

2005.03.03 SLIDE 4IS146 – SPRING 2005

Check-in

• Questions? Concerns?

• danah’s office hours– 5-6PM today in South Hall 303A

2005.03.03 SLIDE 5IS146 – SPRING 2005

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

2005.03.03 SLIDE 6IS146 – SPRING 2005

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

2005.03.03 SLIDE 7IS146 – SPRING 2005

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

2005.03.03 SLIDE 8IS146 – SPRING 2005

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

2005.03.03 SLIDE 9IS146 – SPRING 2005

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 phone’s role

2005.03.03 SLIDE 10IS146 – SPRING 2005

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)

2005.03.03 SLIDE 11IS146 – SPRING 2005

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)

2005.03.03 SLIDE 12IS146 – SPRING 2005

Fischer’s 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?

2005.03.03 SLIDE 13IS146 – SPRING 2005

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

2005.03.03 SLIDE 14IS146 – SPRING 2005

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

2005.03.03 SLIDE 15IS146 – SPRING 2005

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.

2005.03.03 SLIDE 16IS146 – SPRING 2005

Genevieve Bell

• No slides available from Genevieve’s talk

2005.03.03 SLIDE 17IS146 – SPRING 2005

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