My Mobile Evolution
While reading Part I of Networked: The New Social Operating System, I considered my own experiences with the mobile revolution (Rainie & Wellman, 2013). How the world went from landlines to cell phones, from being quiet to being overstimulated, from seeing a phone call as an interruption to being constantly connected. I don't remember it happening... it just happened.
I was 13. It was a flip phone that could call, text, and connect to the internet if my parents had chosen to pay for it. I'm pretty sure I left it on the bus after having it for about a month.
Before my precious flip phone, I remember my dad carried around a Nextel brick of a phone. It was a phone/walkie-talkie hybrid that he mainly used for work. It was loud and I thought it was funny when he used radio terms to communicate.
In high school, I was gifted a phone that would slide out a mini keyboard so I could text as fast as I could type. No longer did I have to press a key 3 times to get to the letter I wanted or rely on T9 predictive texts. If you had a Facebook account (anyone who was anyone did back then), you could link your phone number to your Facebook so you never missed a new comment on your post without being charged for using data.
I think about those early years of my relationship with having a mobile phone; the idea of "scrolling" had yet to exist. Yet here I am, sitting in my bed writing a blog on my wireless laptop, taking a break every once in a while to check a text or swipe through pictures of someone's wedding weekend.
What are your experiences with being mobile?
Reference
Rainie, L. & Wellman, B. (2013). Networked: The new social operating system. Boston, MA: MIT Press.
My first cell phone was one of the walkie talkie bricks and I think its the funniest thing ever! It is interesting to think about much I hate when people have their phone speaker on in public for phone calls, yet walkie talkie phones were essentially speaker phones. Growing up with the onset of the internet was truly a wild time. I remember not having internet, then having really horrible internet, to being annoyed if something did not connect immediately.
ReplyDeleteSomething I often think about though is that while growing up, I was taught so much in school about internet safety, how to tell when things online were fake, and what were good websites to use. As a current teacher, I feel like we do not teach out students these things anymore, as we all assume that this generation just knows it. Are we hurting out kids by not teaching them more about the internet or are they naturally learning it through use?
This is such an interesting thing to think about! A while ago I took my kids to a thrift store and we found an old landline phone. They were fascinated. We bought it (for about a $1) and they love using to play hotel or restaurant. It cracks me up. I remember when my mom got the long cord for our home phone and how excited she was that she could walk around the house and talk still. :) I got my first cell phone when I was 16. It was the flip kind that had a certain amount of text messages each month. I remember moving up to the sliding keyboard phone and I thought that was the best thing ever. I didn't get my first smart phone until after I was married. My husband couldn't believe it took me so long. Sometimes I miss those days when I wasn't so tied to my phone. Now everything is one there! The app I use to pick up my kids from school, my bank apps, my budgeting app, my work chats, my homework apps, my family chats, my shopping apps. Basically everything is on my phone!
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