Rich Ling: An Intellectual Auto-Biography

Introduction: Discovering The Blessed Banality Of Mobile Communication

Since the mid 1990's I have been studying mobile communication. In many ways it is a banal mediation form. Particularly in its pre-smartphone semblance, it was (and still often is) “only” used for talking and texting. As with studies of email, this is simple functionality often puts it in shadow of other perhaps more flashy mediation technologies. The weight of research in this area shows that it is far more interesting to study how newer technologies (social networking, blogs, gaming, etc.) engage “first users'” attention. That said, mobile telephony is the most widely diffused mediation technology on the planet (6.6 billion connections as of this writing).¹ In spite of its banality, it is something unique.

The mobile phone has, from its inception, changed how we carry out social interaction. To gauge this, we need to simply think about to the situation before mobile telephony to see the complexities of organizing our lives. The fact that the mobile phone system makes us individually addressable has dramatically changed the way that we are able to microcoordinate our social interaction. Indeed, this is perhaps the most revolutionary social consequence of the device and it has been a motivation for my work.

The idea of using the mobile phone to coordinate seems obvious. Let me relate a story from my own life that shows how it has changed things. One evening — before we had mobile phones — my wife and I were invited to eat dinner with a friend. We lived within walking distance of a small shopping area. My wife (who is Norwegian) and I needed to separately attend to a couple of errands enroute to the dinner. It was easiest that I drove and she walked to the center. Then we planed to meet up to drive to our friend’s house. As I rushed out the door said that we should meet at the Texaco station. In my haste, and given that she has a “different” way of pronouncing Texaco, what I heard was “taxi station.” The Texaco and taxi stations are not more than 100 meters apart, but since the one is not visible from the other and we had no way of calling one another, they might as well have been Venus and Mars. In short, the seeds of a planning calamity had been sewn.

After waiting too long, I eventually parked the car (illegally), ran into a store to get change and find a phone booth so that I could call home to find out why my wife was delayed. Of course she was at the gas station, equally frustrated, and also trying to call home from another phone booth to see if, for some reason, I had returned home. I next called to our friend to say we would be late. Somewhat later my wife also called the friend to give the same message. I eventually called the friend again. She was able to help coordinate a family reunion. After several iterations and almost an hour of running into stores to get change in order to use phone booths, we managed to meet up at home again and start from zero.

This scene, based on a mispronunciation (or an inattentive listener depending on one’s perspective), is comedic. However, it also underscores the role of the mobile phone in our lives. Had both of us been equipped with mobile phones, the problem would have been solved with a call, a few rebuffs and a five-minute delay. The mobile phone may be banal; but it is also blessed, it is a godsend.