How did we ever survive without cell phones?

Aren't you glad mobile phones have gotten smaller? This beauty weighed nearly 2 pounds and was 10 inches high.

In his article “Ecologizing Mobile Media,” Howard Rheingold uses Neil Postman’s “Ten Principles of Technology” to examine the ways in which mobile telephones have influenced our lives.

The first principle is basically - you gotta take the good with the bad. Rheingold points out that one of the good things about mobile phones, that we are always in contact, is also a bad thing. For most of us, our phones are with us 24/7. Everyone we know knows they can reach us wherever we are, at pretty much any time of day. So we can’t escape it, but how many of us wouldn’t turn the car around if we happened to leave our phones at home in the morning? The other day I was half way to work when I realized that I didn’t have my phone and was debating whether or not to go back and get it. The closer I got to work, the more it bugged me that I didn’t have my phone and so I went back and got it.

The second principle comes down to knowledge. Because more and more people can afford mobile phones, it isn’t so much about the have and have nots, but the “know-how” and “don’t-know-how.” Someone may have the latest phone with all kinds of functions, but if they don’t know how to use it then they are missing out on a major part of the technology.

The third principle is about technology steering us in certain directions. Mobile phones have limits on how many characters we can send in a text, which forces us to be brief.

The fourth principle is all about the newer technologies pushing out the older technologies. In the past, if we wanted to connect with people online we had to use a computer. Now we carry computers around with us at all times, we no longer need a desktop or laptop computer to stay in touch.

The idea behind the fifth principle is that for a technology to really take hold, it has to change the way we do things. Flash mobs can be organized on the fly, we can order pizza and anything else we want online, we can get news of riots/protests that are occurring from the people that are actually participating in them, we don’t have to wait for the news to report about it and the ability to do all that is in the palm of our hands.

The sixth principle is about the different levels of involvement required by the user. Rheingold uses McLuhan’s notion of media either being hot or cold to illustrate this point. When we are using our phone to talk (people still do that?) Rheingold refers to it as being hotter because the listener doesn’t have to do that much, the talker is providing the information, whereas with texting, which is cooler, the receiver of a text is expected to send something back to the sender.

The seventh principle states that “different technologies have different political biases.” To me this seems to be saying that mobile media cannot be controlled. In the past, how we got our information was limited to sources that were being controlled by someone, whereas now, with our mobile phones, we can get and send out information without it being censored.

The eighth principle is about how we interact with different forms of technology differently because of the their physical form. If someone where to call and text the exact same phrase to you, chances are you would feel more of a emotional response to the call because you can hear the inflections in their voice, and hear their laughter.

The ninth principle is about the magic bubble that some mobile phone users seem to think forms around them when they are on the phone. How many times have we overheard more about a strangers personnel life then we ever wanted to know, the in-depth description of a rash that just won’t go away, or a word by word retelling of an argument. We tend to go into our own little worlds when using our phones, often becoming oblivious to our surroundings.

The last principle (I know, finally! And hey, thanks for sticking around) is about the size of content on mobile phones. Because they are always with us, mobile phones have to remain small, and because they are small, the content that we use and access has to work well on them. Text messages limited to a set number of characters works great on a mobile phone, but trying to read Moby Dick on your phone? Not fun, unless of course you followed the twitter account of the guy who posted Moby Dick, 140 characters at a time on Twitter.