ICT Expert Group Meeting Berlin
(30.11 – 02.12.2011)
Double Mobility – Travel,
Communication and Software
Antje Gimmler, Aalborg University
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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Double mobility
- some facts about ICT use
• 2012: 5.3 billion mobile subscribers. That is 77% of world
population source: The International Telecommunication Union, ITU, 2010)
• Especially in developing countries as well as in India more than 50 %
of mobile Web users do not or infrequently use a fixed desktop (US:
25%) (Source: On Device Research 2010)
• The mobile phone penetration outnumbers fixed Internet users 5:2
in 2012 (source ITU, 2010) High growth rates in developing countries
• The future: a ‘mobile only generation’
• By 2016, application-to-person (A2P) messaging will overtake
person-to-person (texting) messaging (source: Juniper Research 2011)
• A2P messaging includes messages to or from an application to or
from a large number of customers in financial services, advertising,
marketing, business administration, ticketing, television voting etc.
(
,
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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Double mobility
- some facts about ICT use
Fixed (wired) broadband penetration, historical leading OECD
Netherlands
40
Switzerland
35
Denmark
30
Norway
Korea
25
Iceland
20
Sweden
15
10
5
0
Source : OECD
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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Double mobility
Double mobility combines spatial/fysical mobility with virtual
mobility
Virtual mobility includes:
- Technological means: airport systems (SMS check-in, RFID
tags for baggage)
- Narrations/stories connected to travel, places, persons,
landscapes
- ICT communication, cellular systems, wireless networks
with mobile communications boundaries, time, space,
communication and overall setting of spatial mobility
changes!
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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1. Pragmatic user-centric perspective
• Philosophical pragmatism: John Dewey
(Goffman, Garfinkel, Don Ihde, Hans Joas,
Richard Sennett)
• Pragmatism: users define situations and make
use of technologies according to their needs,
habits, culture etc.
• Users are neither totally determined by
structures, culture or technology nor are they
‘free’ to choose whatever they want.
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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1. Pragmatic user-centric perspective
• Co-evolution of technology and society rather
than determinism (see also Manuel Castells)
• Users choose pragmatically, according to their
definition of the situation, e.g. combining a
mobile phone with a book, conversation with
online gaming, sharing photos online with
walking and talking in a urban environment
• Internet: from consumption of content to
generation of content (social networks, open
source etc.), competent ICT users
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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1. Pragmatic user-centric perspective
4G – next generation of cellular systems:
• Problematic visions of seamless access and the
definition of the next generation (4G) of cellular
systems such as ‘connecting everything with
everything’ (EC vision 2004)
• Ubiquitous computing (Mark Weiser, 90s)
• Alternative version of 4G: not only improving
coverage, spectral efficiency, capacity and reliability
but: connections of different devices , sharing
information and resources (e.g. ad hoc networking)
• Users are a heterogenous group - 4G matches this by
offering even more personalized services
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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2. What’s going on behind our back?
• P2P: person to person communication
- face-to-face communication, mediated
communication
• P2M: person to machine/machine to person
- checking in with a referencenumber
- airline sending a SMS for checking in
• M2M: machine to machine
- monitoring flight traffic with ATC
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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2. What’s going on behind our back?
• The mobile passenger: mobile phone as a ‘prostetics’ that allows
to connect to other networks and systems
• Mobility systems are code/space entities:
- different coded infrastructures converge in ”coded
assemblages” using automated management
(Kitchin/Dodge, 2011)
- e.g. an airport with ATC (air traffic control),RFID tags,
coded processes of billing, check-in, security screening etc.
- the mobile passenger melts into the coded assemblage,
but is not a ‘docile body’, action is not absolutely
controlled
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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2. What’s going on behind our back?
• Capture systems controll checking-in and security
scan in the beginning of airtravel as well as the
end (immigration control, baggage)
• Zones of negotiations: baggage, fluids, social and
cultural norms of persons of risk
• Beyond the security area: shopping, waiting,
resting, communicating and interacting. The
airport as a shopping mall.
• Airport is divided in two parts: restricted and
unrestricted area
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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3. Micro-coordination – double
mobility
A mobile passenger
- connects to his or her networks
- plans the travel while travelling, controlling ‘on the move’
- uses the facilities offered while travelling by connecting (e.g.
mobile internet)
- combines travel with leisure (e.g. shopping, watching videos)
- makes the place inhabitable (e.g. unpacked traveller in a train)
Different types of travels and different double mobility:
- Commuting: organized work time or leisure
- Holiday trip: exitment and entertainment
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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3. Micro-coordination – double
mobility
Boredom
• A business man on the plane checks his email before the
plane starts. But he is also bored, reads the news on his
mobile, shows me how the text could be minimised and
enlarged. He continues doing this til he has to switch of his
mobile . (31.05.2010, flight Aalborg to Copenhagen)
• A young woman starts to look through her pictures in her
gallery on the mobile phone. When I smile at her, she starts to
tell me about some places she visited and showed me the
pictures. (14.10.2011, train from Aarhus to Aalborg)
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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3. Micro-coordination – double
mobility
Boundary permeability
Business college students on a regional train, only two other
passengers (me included) are in this carriage. One discusses a
calculation from an exam, she uses the computer, goes
online. Others discuss the exam with schoolmates or friends
over the mobile phone. The train carriage turns into a class
room (29.06.2010, train between Plochingen and Ulm,
Germany)
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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3. Micro coordination – double
mobility
Social intrusiveness
- A girl tells someone on the mobile phone that a guy hasn’t
called her. She leans with half of her body against the window,
looking out of the window, avoiding eye contact with other
passengers. The other passengers in proximity of ca. 8 meters
can follow the conversation. The other passengers start to
look at each other, indicating that this is disturbing, not only
because she speaks loudly, but because of the topic. One feels
irritated about the girls obvious unlucky relationship to a guy
who – as far as we know as audience – doesn’t care about
her.
- Blurring the boundaries between private and public, renegotiations
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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Research perspectives
- Strictly organized and controlled mobility systems such as
the airport are partly in collision with the mobile
passenger. The logic of capture systems at airports collide
with the mobile passengers habits
- ICTs or code/space is performed and experienced
differently, from highly restricted to rather unlimited
- How is double mobility performed? What new forms of
behavior arise? How is co-presence part of double
mobility?
- How are media combined/used? Are there lessons to
learn for new applications enabled by 4G?
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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Literature:
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Peter Adey (2010)
Mobility, London: Routledge.
Manuel Castells et al. (2007)
Mobile Communication and Society. A Global Perspective, Cambridge Mass.:
MIT Press.
Cresswell, Tim (2006)
On the Move. Mobility in the Modern Western World, New York: Taylor &
Francis/Routledge.
David Bissell (2008)
Visualising everyday geographies: practices of vision through travel-time,
in: Transactions of the Institute of British Geography, Vol. 34, pp. 42-60.
Simone Frattasi, Hanane Fathi, Antje Gimmler, Frank Fitzek, Ramjee Prasad (2006)
Designing Socially Robust 4 G Services, in: IEEE Technology and Society, Vol.
25,2, pp. 51-64.
Antje Gimmler (2007)
Handeln und Erfahrung – Überlegungen zu einer pragmatischen Theorie der Technik,
in: Luckner et al. (eds.), Handeln und Technik, Berlin: LIT Verlag, pp. 61 –74.
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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Literature:
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Nicola Green (2002)
On the Move: technology, mobility, and the mediation of social time and
space, in: Information Society, 18, pp. 281-292.
Robin Kitchin/Martin Dodge (2011)
Code/Space. Software and Everyday Life, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press
Claus Lassen (2006)
Aeromobility and work, in: Environment and Planning A, 38, pp. 301-312.
Rich Ling/Per E. Pedersen (eds.) (2005)
Mobile Communications. Re-negotiation of the Social Sphere, London:
Springer.
Urry, John (2007)
Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Watts, Laura (2008)
The art and craft of train travel, in: Social & Cultural Geography, 9:6, pp. 711
– 726.
gimmler@socsci.aau.dk
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