Always On– Chap 7

• “As of early January 2007, there were 2.73 billion mobile phone subscriptions. More than one-third of the earth’s population had mobile access, largely on the GSM system.” (128)
I just read an article about mobile phone use in Africa and India: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7893849.stm. This article talks about the 4 billion mobile phones in the world and using them to get health information out to people in rural areas. ("There's 4 billion mobile phones now in the world, 2.2 billion of those in the developing world," said Ms Thwaites. "Compare that to 305 million PCs and then look at hospital bed numbers: there's 11 million of them in the developing world.") Also, I have a professor here that is trying to connect these mobile phones to international weather reports to help people who can then use that information to keep food dry and avoid flash floods and prepare for other extreme weather situations. When you think of the number of people who have phones and the fact that phones are getting stronger and stronger, it really becomes and interesting area to focus national and international campaigns.

• “Culture-specific mobile phone usage sometimes springs from economic necessity.” (131) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flP-o0ydkvo. I loved this commercial because, in high school we used collect service in the same way to signal for our parents to pick us up after school without having to pay. Obviously this was before cell phones.


What are the consequences of being linguistically always on? (181) Great question!