The First Steps of Mobile Multimedia: Towards an Explosion...

The First Steps of Mobile Multimedia: Towards an Explosionof Banality?*

An early version of this paper was presented at The First Asia – Europe Conferenceon Computer Mediated Interactive Communications Technology, Tagaytay City, The

Philippines, 20-22 October, 2003.

Ilpo KoskinenProfessor, Dr. Soc. Sci.

University of Art and DesignDepartment of Product and Strategic Design

Hämeentie 135 C00560 Helsinki

[email protected]

+358-50-329 6021

I would like to thank Ministry of Trade and Transportation of Finland and Radiolinja,a mobile phone operator, for funding. In addition, I have received help from NokiaResearch Center at Tampere, and The Museum of Modern Art Kiasma, Helsinki.Esko Kurvinen and Katja Battarbee have shared the data and many thoughts with me.For the expression “explosion of banality,” I am grateful for Raul Pertierra. Finally, Iam grateful for Eija-Liisa Kasesniemi and Eija Kaasinen from National TechnologyResearch Institution, Tampere.

C:\koskinen\koskinen\tutkimus\Konferenssit\pertierra\presentations\manila-paper020.doc

The First Steps of Mobile Multimedia

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Abstract

The First Steps of Mobile Multimedia: Towards an Explosionof Banality?

Mobile multimedia is on its way to the marketplace. One development line of mobilephones is fast filling the market with digital cameras, sound features, and gamingoptions. For instance, Siemens estimates that up to 30% of phones sold in Europe in2004 will have an in-built camera.

For a sociologist, the question is, how is this technology used? How does it changethe way we relate to mobile telephony? The ”Apparatgeist” scenarios give threepossible futures. One situates mobile multimedia firmly to everyday life, anotherrelates it to personal identity politics, while a third situates it into the realm of cultureand spectacle. In the everyday life scenario, there are two main variants, instumentaland expressive. The identity politics version originally built on Sherry Turkle’sargument about the Internet as an arena for identity experimentation, but has sincethen evolved into studies of subcultures and fashion. None of the scenarios stressespolitical consequences.

This paper studies first empirical evidence of how mobile multimedia is used toanalyze these questions. These studies have been conducted in Helsinki, Finland, in1999-2003. They focus on (1) how mobile phones are used in sending and receivingdigital images, (2) MMS (multimedia messaging service), (3) mobile video, and (4)two recent artistic experiments with MMS technology.

The results suggest that mobile multimedia follows the everyday life scenario mainly:people fit it into their ordinary activities, using it mostly for mutual entertainment, farless often for instrumental purposes. In these first observations, there is someevidence about spectacle, but significant negative evidenced even in this evidence.There is little evidence of identity politics, and practically no evidence to support amore political scenario. In conclusion, if these first observations are right, mobilemultimedia will enrich our lives in many ways in the future, but does not makesignificant contribution to politics, or other social structures at large.


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Introduction

Mobile multimedia is on its way to the marketplace. One development line of mobile

phones is fast filling the market with digital cameras, sound features, and gaming

options. For instance, Siemens estimates that up to 30% of phones sold in Europe in

2004 will have an in-built camera. A research consultancy, Strategy Analytics,

estimates that in the first six months of 2003, the worldwide sell of mobile phones

with a camera was 25 million units. The biggest companies are NEC and Panasonic,

with 15% of markets each, and Nokia, with 14%. This is more than the sale of digital

cameras during the same period. Camera phones are fast becoming the dominant

technology of digital imaging [32: 2004-02-19]. The largest digital camera

manufacturer in the world in 2003 was Nokia rather than Sony or Canon.

For a sociologist, the question is how is this technology used? How does it

change the way we relate to mobile telephony? My answer is preliminary, and is built

in two steps, first by looking at what I call Apparatgeist scenarios, and then by

contrasting to empirical data, analyzed from a situated perspective using data from

several studies conducted in Helsinki and Tampere, Finland. Notice that these

scenarios are made in the spirit of discovery. They are aimed to inform us about the

future directions of multimedia messaging rather than to give a review of literature.

Three ”Apparatgeist” Scenarios for Mobile Multimedia

Imagine a life in which we go through our days in frames set by institutions, some

tightly, some loosely structured. They provide the environmental and social “anchors”


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for our activities and experience. Sometimes we experience things alone, but mostly

with others: sometimes our experience becomes socially coordinated. Most of our

experience is based on what can be called “routines,” but there is always practical

knowledge involved. In only some situations, we take a reflexive attitude towards

what we are doing.

What is the role of mobile multimedia in this vision? What happens if people

carry with them imaging technology, an audio recording capability, and a text

messaging, as well as phone capacity? With multimedia, they can observe they can

observe experience, and report it to others. How do they observe things, and how do

they report it to others. What resources they use to do that? The following three

scenarios crystallize the ”Apparatgeist” scenarios (as Katz and Aakhus [12] call

Zeitgeist diagnoses, be these based on informed opinion, user experience, or on

research) give three possible futures for mobile multimedia.1

The first Apparatgeist scenario situates mobile multimedia to everyday life

and claims that we take our methods of use from it. With new means, people do what

they have always done: questions and answers, teases, FYIs, news announcements,

and so forth. This is how text messaging and mobile phones are used. However, there

are two main variants in this strand, instrumental and expressive. In the instrumental

scenario, mobile multimedia is used to advance rational tasks of various sorts, ranging

from business deals to organizing encounters and giving directions while on the move

[17, 23, 24: 182]. Another variant sees mobile multimedia primarily as an expressive

technology in the everyday life. Several strands of evidence support this scenario. For

example, in Japan, a world leader in picture communication, peer-to-peer

1 The fourth scenario links mobile communication to politics by studying how mobiletelephones have been used in rallying crowds for political purposes [25, 34].


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communication and games have become popular. Empirical research shows that

pictures are fun to make, share, and browse together [21, 22]. Photographs and home

videos make memories permanent and shareable [14: 21-30, 4]. In the first empirical

studies on mobile phones and imaging, “sociability” was the word that best described

multimedia messaging [14, also 10, 13].

The second Apparatgeist scenario situates mobile multimedia into the realm of

culture and spectacle. If this scenario is right, people utilize structures from media

and entertainment to organize their uses of multimedia. For example, they make

stories, images, presentation formats, and use quiz show types of question-answer

formats. This is an extension of the argument that was put forth in the early days of

the Internet, with emphasis on the expressive and artistic qualities of hypertext [1, 20].

In one sense, this is an extension of the entertainment scenario, but the means are

different, based on arts and applied arts. Multimedia leads us into a commercially

driven experience society [26].

The third Apparatgeist scenario is cyberutopic in nature, and relates it to

personal identity. This version builds on Sherry Turkle’s argument about the Internet

as an arena for identity experimentation.

Traditional role-playing games… are psychologically evocative. MUDs are even

more so because they further the blur between the game and real life, usually

referred to in cyberspace as RL. In face-to-face role-playing games, one steps in

and out of a character. MUDs, in contrast, offer a character or characters that may

become parallel identities. [36: 186].


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This claim has its problems (for instance, it neglects that people have bodies),

but is still potentially informative. If generalized, this scenario suggests that mobile

multimedia may become a tool for creating a series of fictional characters that may

become such parallel identities. Ultimately, this argument suggests, mobile

multimedia could become a platform for identity politics. For example, in such

scenario, mobile chat rooms become arenas and initiators of intimate interaction.

Marc Relieu has shown that this may take place in SMS chat [27].

How mobile multimedia contributes to society depends on how people use it.

If its use follows the everyday life perspective, its consequences are at the

interpersonal level rather than at the level of societal organization. Like mobile

telephony and text messaging, it provides a technology that helps people to coordinate

their mutual affairs regardless of place, and a means for mutual, peer-to-peer

entertainment. If, in contrast, people take their cues from the visual arts and movies, it

may be either a “colonializing” technology that makes commercial entertainment even

more prominent in our lives [26]. However, it may also be a reflexive technology, if

people use mobile multimedia to take distance from spectacles offered by commercial

arts. Finally, mobile multimedia may provide lead to exploring identities, and

questioning those organizations of the self that glue society together. But just as well,

it may confirm the existing self-organizations.

Observing and Reporting with Mobile Multimedia

To understand how people use of mobile multimedia, I look at evidence from a series

of user studies. My perspective builds loosely on ethnomethodology [5, 33]. The

focus is on what people will do with new technologies, rather than what they say


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about their use, or what information can be traced from log information alone. When

doing their daily tasks, people experience a set of things, ranging from material

objects, texts, people to scenery and – through symbolic, conceptual and theoretical

constructs – issues such as power relationships or their own selves. What they observe

depends on what methods they use to pick things up from the flux of experience. They

use these same methods to report their observations to others. Typically, people report

ordinary things that somehow stand out in terms of importance: news announcements,

beautiful scenery, feelings, or emotional experiences related to the sender’s location.

As Figure 1, taken from a student art piece done with Nokia 7650 in 2002

shows, there is nothing natural in the ways in which perception with mobile

multimedia works. Of course, there is nothing artistically new here (think about

Hockney and cubists). Still, as an image, it presents a complex play on how moving

perspective affects perception. It captures how people experience town houses while

on-the-move.

Figure 1. Restaurant Carelia near Helsinki Opera

Mobile multimedia technology opens another possibility as well. People are

able to share their observations with other people while on the move. Others may


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respond immediately, which makes it possible for people not just to observe and

report things they see, but also to elaborate them socially, again regardless of place.

Taken to an extreme, such vision lends support to the cyberutopic Apparatgeist

scenarios, in which technology unleashes social imagination and creativity, mixing

virtual and real worlds into a seamless web of imagination. Elements of imagination

can be borrowed from media culture. One case is reported in Mobile Image [14: 33-

35]. The first image was of a beautiful street corner in summer (Figure 2-3). However,

the response was not predictable. The image has been shaken digitally to reflect the

movements of a colleague, whose Godzilla-size green-colored face has been added to

the horizon. This manipulation, done in a PC, was sent to others as an attachment to

an e-mail message, rather than over a wireless network.

Figure 2. On the Esplanade

"I'm on the Esplanade! Cool!"

The Giant Green Sociologist

"STOMP!""What was that?""STOMP!""Run for your lives... it's... it's... the GiantGreen Sociologist!""STOMP!"

However, although such “de-scriptation” of technology [2] does take place, as

fashionable theories of user’ creativity argue [see 31], the argument that stresses such


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creative responses should not be taken too far. More typically, people act within the

bounds of normal “scripts.” First, there are “affordances” that keep this creativity in

check [see 8]. Such affordances are related to technical qualities of MMS. Most

notably, the camera in MMS is inferior in quality when compared to real cameras,

whether digital or not. In particular, this affects photographing movement and also in

difficult lighting conditions. Even though users can compensate these problems in

many ways, they must know how to switch images between the PC and the phone,

have access to powerful image processing software, as well as skills and time to

manipulate them.

Similarly, existing Apparatgeist scenarios are missing key elements of use: the

everyday vision does not give much weight to the key ingredients in cultural

imagination, the spectacular vision neglects ordinary methods of acting, and the

cyberutopic versions neglect situational exigencies in life. In normal life, our ordinary

methods of seeing work perfectly well for our practical purposes [3, 30: 253-4], as

well as our habit of reciprocating in responding [6, 16]. Finally, there are moral

constraints for photographing, ranging from social situation to social control and

shame [15]. As researchers, we should be wary of assuming that people change their

habits because they get access to new technology.

Data and Methods. Study Design

This paper studies first empirical evidence of how mobile multimedia is used to

analyze these questions. These studies have been conducted in Helsinki, Finland, in

1999-2003. They focus on (1) how mobile phones are used in sending and receiving

digital images, (2) MMS (multimedia messaging service), (3) mobile video, and (4) a


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recent artistic experiment with MMS technology. These studies were done with

industrial designers Esko Kurvinen and Katja Battarbee, and several assistants.

In Mobile Image (MI), we gave a Nokia 9110 and a Casio digital camera,

connected with an infrared link, to four groups of five people (pilot, male, female, and

control groups, the pilot and the control being mixed-gender) for approximately 2-3

months each. Photographing became even more mundane and ad hoc than in

Maypole. People shot images of their meals, dirty plates in the sink, their home street,

and so forth. The University offered access to a computer system for all participants.

Messages were collected as e-mail attachments. For ethical reasons, we did not

automatize this procedure, but asked participants to send or forward all their messages

to the researcher responsible for the project. Groups were selected to saturate

technical expertise, access to technology, and gender. Radiolinja provided a free

phone service (based on GSM technology) [14].

The Radiolinja MMS Study (Radiolinja). In this study, we selected three user

groups from a Radiolinja technology and service pilot. The pilot took place in summer

2002, and lasted about 5 weeks. Each user was given a MMS phone (either Nokia

7650 with an integrated camera or SonyEricsson T68i with a plugin camera). Three

mixed-gender groups with 7, 11, and 7 members were studied. Out of the Radiolinja

pilot, we selected groups to take into account gender difference, terminal types, and

the city-countryside axis. Exact numbers are confidential, but the following figures

point the scale of messaging in the pilot. In all, users sent over 4000 messages during

the pilot. Over 2000 were unique (the rest being duplicates in group messages, or

recycled messages). These data were produced through the Radiolinja system

automatically. As in Mobile Image, the service was free of charge.


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In addition to these large data sets, I have used two smaller sets of data as

possible deviant cases. Mobile Video is courtesy from Eija-Liisa Kasesniemi, National

Technological Research Center, Tampere, Finland [11]. This small data set consists of

20 video messages, with an average length of 10.6 seconds, including 4 animations,

with as minimum 3 makers. I do not have responses to these videos, but they provide

a possibility for making initial comparisons. Moby Click was an art exhibition done in

Helsinki. A group of 8 photography and design students got an MMS phone (Nokia

7650) from Kiasma, the Museum of Modern Art, and were asked to produce

experimental work for the museum. Displayed in Fall 2003, the exhibition consisted

of four works, two based on photography, one on multimedia (MM Flash), while one,

a MMS board, was done together with Kiasma technicians, a technology provider,

and Nokia Mobile Phones. The point of Moby Click is that it was done in an

institutional context that was radically different from ordinary use. I rely on Ms. Heli

Rantavuo’s yet unpublished observations on the process.

Participants knew that they were studied, and were informed about the ethical

procedures we used. In particular, we told them how our data was produced, promised

not to publish pictures without their consent, and promised to change details of

images so that it would not be possible to identify them from our publications. In

addition, we have followed standard academic and legal practice and have changed all

names and details that could identify people or places.

The “Home Base” of Mobile Multimedia: Peer-to-Peer Interaction

When with a “hiptop” camera, people document oddities, life, as well as ordinary life.

To some extent, their gaze changes – for instance, in an odd town, they may move


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after photogenic scenes [4]. When people navigate their way around town, they

experience things mostly routinely, with little if any attention to their surroundings.

However, some things are picked up from our surroundings. These include news [18,

35], “storyable” things and events [29], and more generally, things that are somehow

noticeable [3, 30].

In functional terms, a few examples from Radiolinja and Mobile Image show

how images were used in messaging. Figures 3-4 are typical in this respect. In them,

the sender conducts affairs with the recipient. Figure 3 is about selecting a pillow with

a right color from the supermarket. In Figure 4, Tom asks for a bank account number

from his friend. Notice how images function in these examples. Figure 3 is perhaps

the only example in Radiolinja in which the picture was a necessary element in

instrumental communication. In Figure 4, the main affair was conducted through text,

while the picture was a scenic element, unnecessary for the point. Video 1, in contrast,

shows how video may be used for giving instructions with animation. There is no

text; the audio does the work.

Figure 3. 897 to 272. Wed 24.7. 17:10

This blue color in the middle is in the stock for pillows. Figure 4. From Tom 12.7. 12:22


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Send me your bank account number and I’ll send you some money for tobacco.Video 1. (animation, consisting of 4 separate shots and audio, no text)#1

File C ovirakenteline.3gpC door scaffolding.3gp

Sec10

Video shot by shot Audio

4 Yard of a house(block of flats)

-

6 Parking place You can leave the car here

8 Path from parkingplace to the house

Then you walk from here

10 Houses It is the high one, with ascaffold -- (the video stopsbefore the word ends)

Thus, if we define “instrumental” as something saves money, time, travel, or

other types of resources, it appears that multimedia contributes little to that kind of

communication. Rather, it is a feeling element, something that augments and enriches

instrumental communication with image and audio. However, these are not

necessarily elements in instrumental interaction.

Figure 5. On a skiing-trip in Italy [14: 79]

Greetings from Italy, it was a good trip... The right top corner had by far the bestattitude. Further report after I get over jet-lag

Jari


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In general, then, most multimedia messaging in our data sets is for sheer

entertainment. It supports the entertainment variant of the everyday life Apparatgeist

scenario. Through it, people observe not just things they find important (such as

children, emotionally important moments, key symbols of life, food), but also oddities

of life (such as bizarre posters). For example, what is the point in Figure 5, which

seems to report pure joy in terms of greetings, perhaps peppered with a slight sexual

overtone. Overwhelmingly, then, mobile multimedia messaging consist of people

picking up items from the stream of experience with an aim to entertain others. In

this, mobile multimedia works much like SMS and phones, which are typically used

to fill up boring moments of life: waiting for a bus or train, sitting idly in café, or

being stuck in rush hour traffic [13, 23]. A preliminary conclusion is that media

phones remain mobile phones, but also, they seem to encourage new kinds of

observation and reporting or ordinary events: human experience becomes a resource

that is scanned for fun and mutual entertainment.

Imagining Worlds on the Phone: Spectacle in Multimedia Messaging

Multimedia may break from ordinary methods of observation and communication by

borrowing elements from media and other public sources. This, in fact, is the claim of

what can be called the cyberutopic literature. Were this literature true, multimedia

technology would free people from the strictures of everyday life, making it a

continuous creative exercise. As such, this argument is an extension of the mutual

entertainment elaborated above. However, the means are different: here, there must be


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(explicit) references to stories, artistic patterns, or other forms of professional media

guiding imagination.

To some extent, there are instances of such uses. For example, Video 2 shows

that at least sometimes, people do observe things in their surroundings using

metaphors elaborated by Hollywood. However, this is the only case of direct

reference to movies in all studies reported in this paper. More typically, media enters

multimedia as loans from TV, advertisements, and newspapers. For example, Figure 6

offers a moral observation done with a loan from a tabloid.

Video 2. (one shot)#16

FileIlmestyskirjanyt.3gp(ApocalypseNow.3gp)

Sec9

Video Audio

9 A picture of afan in a darkhouse. Behindthe fan, there isa strong light

No talk. Unidentifiablebackground music, mysticalpop a la the Doors. Strongecho

Figure 6.

Next time you should think twice before you leave your kid to just somebody.(text in the paper: “A drunken grandma left a two year old to the street”

Such reorganization may require extensive planning by a group of people. In

one example in Mobile Image, six people scripted and acted a “murder movie” for the

camera, while having a summer night picnic [14: 55-62]. The story was shot several

weeks earlier, but not sent until Midsummer night. Some people had already inquired

about it, as can be deduced from the first line. The Nokia Communicator was unable


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to send the entire story, which was composed of seven pictures with attached text.

Thus, the message was split into two parts, which were named to inform the recipient

that they were part of the same story.

Sometimes, media uses go beyond mere observation and moral commentary.

In a few cases, people organize their experience and social action using media as a

source. Video 3 shows that we now only take observational methods from the world

of (sports) entertainment, but also may live through that world in our daily

imagination with our friends. Here two young men are in a car but they are acting the

situation as if they were driving a rally car.

Video 3. (one shot)#16

File Ralli.3gp(Rally.3gp)

Sec9

Video Audio“track 1” “track 2”

1-4 From within acar, a video ofdark road, withsnow walls onboth sides.

F-cking quickturn to left thenright-left (( ))-like veryquickly) leftthen (jump)

7 150 over the hillthen jump

All the timein the back,rally carsounds by ayoung man

Identities and Moral Boundaries in MMS

Is mobile multimedia a technology of the self? If this is the case, people document

their lives to learn about themselves or for self-presentation to others. Parallel

identities lived through, perhaps based on social movements. After the previous

section, it is easy to see that mobile multimedia could support such virtual living.

However, as previous examples suggest, message senders seldom explicated

their identity, leaving it to the receivers to decide. Typically, when identities appear,

they appear indirectly from message details. With the possible exception of Video 3,


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in which two men construct a rally-driver identity to be sent, in most cases, identities

and identity units (like families) communicated over the wireless network are firmly

based on real life. For example, in Figure 7, the sender is “seeably” a father of a baby

(Anna), who is in her mother’s hands, watering the lawn. We see not just a baby on

her mother’s arms, but also understand that there is family, a larger unit, involved in

action [see 29].

Figure 11. 31.07.02 18:53 Mary

Hi, bonita people!I was watering the lawn and feeding the cats with mom and pop. Nice sailing days foryou! BR: Anna

Such customary identities are typically contested in just two interactional

environments. First, teases are typical places in which projected identities were

contested and questioned. For example, in one case in MI, Santala sent a story of his

weekend in six parts. Designed as a sexual boast, the story started with clothes on the

floor and ended with a woman’s naked leg underneath a blanket in bed. The response

to the ladies’ man identity was to tease Santala for forgetting the last picture, “that is,

the one in which you’re playing with yourself in the toilet with your girly

magazine…” Santala’s bragging opened a spot for a tease. Secondly, in insults,

unwanted identities are typically imposed on people. Perhaps the most typical insult

was “gay,” which contests manhood. However, again, these are typically ritual insults

between young men rather than real insults. They do not challenge real identities, but

identities that are overblown and laughable in some way.


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To take an example of how interactional constraints work to keep such identity

plays in check, we can take a look how young men in Mobile Image developed the

ladies’ men culture. They took photographs of practically every young woman they

saw, and in text claimed that they had an intimate relationship with them. This was a

ladies’ man culture, exemplified by Figure 8, in which one of the members of the

group sent an image of a blonde, and suggested that he had been with her in a bar. In

truth, she was going steady with another member of the group, as the second text

shows.

Text #1: To the male group

Howdy Dowdy Dudes! Last night I wasin a bar with three pints of beer and thisgorgeous blonde! Try beating that!

Figure 8.

Text #2: To Tomi, her boyfriend

Look Tomi! Here's a picture of yourhard-drinking girlfriend!

Here, mobile multimedia provided an environment in which such predatory

male identity could be created and shared. However, such messaging strengthens a

male identity rather than plays with sexual themes in the sense proposed by Turkle.

Of course, this is partly because of setting (men knew each other), but still, it presents

a case of parallel identity. Such culture was not new to these young men. In

interviews, they told us that they shared occasionally pornographic video clips

through the e-mail. In a sense, mobile multimedia just adds to the sexual content in

the digital realm.


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However, several things kept such culture in check. As Figure 9 shows, these

men observed some internal limits to what could be legitimately sent and what not.

Pictures are two “cookies” (their slang expression for young women), who are in fact

girls in their early teens. Not just the text refers to “voyerism” and is regretful in tone,

but camerawork also shows that something was wrong: it was not self-assured as in

Figure 8, but has a peeping-tomish quality.

Figure 9.Little girls

This may be slightly voyerish, but thereis a picture of two Swedish-speakinglittle cookies that were in the same tramwith meb. eric

There is an element of self-control. If messages get over certain moral lines,

then guilt and shame enter the picture and keep messaging in check. Other checks

were abundant as well. First, there was an element of tact. For instance, in the

interviews, Esa says that he chose not to take pictures of people's faces when they

were suffering from hangovers in the morning, or to capture particularly wild

moments at parties:

I did delete some of the images of the housewarming party, when someone was,

like, their eyes were like piss holes in the snow; I didn't feel like circulating those,

since it wouldn't necessarily be nice when they leave nothing to the imagination.

(Esa)


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Second, there was an element of social control involved. For example, in

interviews, we were told that "The group might, like, say please don't take any

pictures; I really don't want to be in pictures like this." If the day after pictures were

taken, Esa received phone calls and text messages with the wish that certain pictures

not be circulated, he complied with the request. "I have myself sometimes asked

someone to censor some traditional photos, like, I would not get mad if they'd

disappear. It is only fair towards friends to do this." Third, there is a process that

might be referred to as “technology wear”: the boys’ joke quickly became old. For

example, women quickly got tired of being constantly photographed, and those who

knew how they were treated in boys’ virtual imagination got fed up even quicker. As

Jari puts it, "All the girls were completely fed up with this by the end, like 'isn't it

going to end at some point or what?'" Even their favorite target, “a super-fun girl…

eventually got tired of her role of being photographed time and again… Everyone was

always taking pictures of her, and finally she went, 'I can't take this any more at all.'"

[14: Ch. 7].

Thus, although there are hints of identity work of sorts in our data, it is clear

that mobile multimedia have social limits. Of course, our data comes from peer-to-

peer groups, not from environments studied by Turkle [36], where there is virtually no

social control beyond some simple and unenforceable rules of “netiquette.” Still, it

suggests that Turkle’s analysis can be applied to a good deal of multimedia messaging

only with great difficulties. The Giddensian interpretation of increasing reflexivity

may work better in characterizing this technology, which makes people think anew

their social environment and their place in it [7]. Limits to what is considered suitable

come from social action, and even though people may construct wireless identities, it


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appears that in the main, traditional role-identity hierarchies are largely replicated and

even strengthened in multimedia messaging.

Conclusions and Discussion

In this paper, I first described three possible uses of mobile multimedia. The first of

these Apparatgeist scenarios situates this technology to everyday life and stresses that

people use it to conduct their ordinary affairs and to entertain their peers. According

to the second scenario, mobile multimedia helps people to make cultural loans a key

part of how they observe and report things and events in life. According to the third

scenario, people start to observe themselves in new ways: mobile multimedia leads

into questioning and constructing parallel identities for the wireless world. These

scenarios are based on analogies from mobile telephony, the Internet and studies on

prototypes.

Where does first empirical data on mobile multimedia, collected from Helsinki

and Tampere, fit in in this range of Apparatgeist scenarios? The result firmly situates

it to everyday life. People do small things with it, and the way in which they observe

and report things in their Lifeworld is largely based on mundane structures. Mobile

multimedia supports many things, but it is mainly an instrument for mutual

entertainment. There is much less evidence on media loans (except in the pilot

group’s messaging in Mobile Image), and even less on identity plays in the sense

proposed by Turkle [36]. Thus, I will cautiously concur with Miller and Slater [19].

Just as the Internet, mobile multimedia is socially embedded technology, and people

use it just as another technology to conduct their ordinary affairs. Moreover, mobile

multimedia typically transforms ordinary things in life into mutual entertainment. In


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our experiments, it has been a technology that “explodes banality.” With it, people

transform small things in everyday life into mutual entertainment. Other uses are less

important.

In more political terms, mobile multimedia does not appear to be a political

technology; instead, it mainly supports mutual entertainment and storytelling.

However, this does not need to be so; our data is from small groups of friends, with

no political aims. Importantly, SMS has been used in political campaigning in both

Hungary [34] and – perhaps – in the Philippines [25]. Mobile phones make it possible

to coordinate protest, and thus they may have significant consequences to political

processes [25]. Also, as camera phones are become ubiquitous, they may be changing

journalism [37, 38]. Indeed, gossip columns are already using this technology, paying

for pictures and multimedia messages, and at least in Finland, there has been one case

in which a bank robbery was filmed with a camera phone [9]. Of course, these are just

early indicators of something that may lurk in the future.

However, even if the interpretation pushed in this article would hold in the

future, mobile multimedia brings several changes to the lives of those who use it. It

strengthens the entertaining dimension of mobile telephony. With this technology,

people go around, making observations and reporting funny occasions as well as life’s

small obscurities, sometimes even living things for the camera and acting small plays,

transforming the ordinary into an imaginary world. Of course, they do useful things as

well, but decorate that action with entertaining elements. In a sense, it is a technology

that is taking us towards a society of entertainment, in which experience becomes a

resource for celebration. Notice that this is different from the “experience society”

vision, which is thoroughly commercialized and designer-centered [26]. There is very


21

little evidence on such designer-centered vision in my data, partly because of group-

centered research design [but see 28].

In methodological terms, these studies show the value of a naturalistic

research agenda. To get an idea of how new technology is used, we need to study it in

the field with a long enough time period, and gather data not just through

interviewing, but also by saving actual messages. Such research design makes it

possible for us to capture not only the first explorations with new technology, or mere

tech talk, but also the routine and social uses that arise over time. Such design does

not make it possible to predict to what happens to 3rd generation phones, but it

provides us with a wealth of information about how people are going to use their new

phones if and when 3G breaks through. Also, they give us a possibility to make

design and rough user testing possible already before technology is fully developed.

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http://www.marginwalker.org/1imc.html

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