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Bull, M. (2006). Sound moves: iPod culture and urban experience.Routledge.

 * Sound Moves opens up a new area in sociological and urban studies: the aural experience of the social, mediated through mobile technologies of communication. In this innovative new study, Michael Bull argues that contemporary urban culture is witnessing a major social transformation in how people communicate in key areas of everyday life. Where in earlier times the experience of sound was collective and relatively fixed, we now increasingly carry our own privatized sound world with us as we move. The implications of this for notions of social cohesion are considerable. Similarly, this method of investigating urban relations opens up fascinating lines of speculation on the new sanctuary of private experience, arrived at through the iPod and the loss of the chance encounters of the street in favor of a chosen and narrower set of social relations created by the car and the phone.

Katz, J. E. (2006). Magic in the air: Mobile communication and the transformation of social life. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

 * 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 reconfiguration 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 helping students 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 mobiles 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.

Cooper, G., Green, N., & Harper, R. (eds) (2005). The mobile society: Technology and social action. London: Berg Publishers.

 * The impact of cell phones on the way we live is undeniable; the precise nature of this impact is less certain. How are cell phones changing our environments? What is their impact on society? Could these phones be anti-social, even though their function is to connect people? These are some of the key issues that the book addresses. The Mobile Society considers the ways in which the cell phone has become embedded in everyday life. It focuses on mobile usage among young people, highlighting the ways in which it is shaped by existing peer culture, and examining the ritual properties of text messaging. It is an essential read for anyone with an interest in new technology and media as well as sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies.

Haddon, L., Mante, E., Sapio, B., Kommonen, K-H, Fortunati, L. & Kant, A. (eds)(2005). Everyday Innovators: Researching the role of users in shaping ICTs. Springer.

 * Everyday Innovators explores the active role of people, collectively and individually, in shaping the use of information and communication technologies. It examines issues around acquiring and using that knowledge of users, how we should conceptualise the role of users and understand the forms and limitations of their participation. To what extent should we think of users as being innovative and creative? To what extent is this routine or exceptional, confined to particular group of users or part of many people?s experience of technologies? Where does the nature of the ICT or the particularities of its design impose constraints on the active role that users can play in their interaction with devices and services? Where do the horizons and orientations of the users influence or limit what they want and expect of their ICTs and how they use them? This book enables a cross-fertilisation of perspectives from different disciplines and aims to provide new insights into the role of users, drawing out both applied and theoretical implications.