Taken for Grantedness ─ The Embedding of Mobile Communication into Society

Why do we feel insulted or exasperated when our friends and family don't answer theirmobile phones? If the Internet has allowed us to broaden our social world into a virtual friend-net,the mobile phone is an instrument of a more intimate social sphere. The mobile phone provides ataken-for-granted link to the people to whom we are closest; when we are without it, social anddomestic disarray may result. In just a few years, the mobile phone has become central to thefunctioning of society. In this book, Rich Ling explores the process by which the mobile phone hasbecome embedded in society, comparing it to earlier technologies that changed the character of oursocial interaction and, along the way, became taken for granted. Ling, drawing on research,interviews, and quantitative material, shows how the mobile phone (and the clock and the automobilebefore it) can be regarded as a social mediation technology, with a critical mass of users, asupporting ideology, changes in the social ecology, and a web of mutual expectations regarding use.By examining the similarities and synergies among these three technologies, Ling sheds a moregeneral light on how technical systems become embedded in society and how they support socialinteraction within the closest sphere of friends and family