Mobile communication and the transformation of daily life: The next phase of research on mobiles

Abstract

In 2004, Prof. Christopher Henshilwood of the University of Bergen discovered in South Africa what appears to be the oldest known jewelry—75,000 year old pierced and ochre-tinted tick shells. His discovery suggested the importance of jewelry and other forms of interpersonal communication and representation. Henshilwood asserts that “once symbolically mediated behavior was adopted by our ancestors it meant communication strategies rapidly shifted, leading to the transmission of individual and widely shared cultural values” (Graham 2004). If we agree with Prof. Henshilwood’s assessment of the import of the initial use of symbolic display technologies (in this case, tick shell decorative jewelry), the implications for evolving practices of mobile communication technology may be even more significant than we generally assume. Specifically, novel forms of widespread mediated communication could alter the cultural values we embrace and transmit. They could also transform social structure, interpersonal processes and land use in ways we might neither anticipate nor desire.