The Fetishization of Cellphones:

Over the past 10 years we have seen the extreme advances through cell phone technology; for many of us, we never leave home without it, and never turn it off. It is a physical extension of our lives moulded into a miniature device. And with such a large inception into the majority of lives throughout the world, it poses the question if by owning and communicating with our cell phones, we are all subconsciously moving into the ‘technophile’ category, as our lives largely become dependent.

I chose this topic through personal experience, in which earlier this week I had broken my phone and had to wait 3 days for it to be repaired. Living without it was such a bizarre experience, and truly quite frustrating. I found myself reaching for it even though it wasn’t there several times, as well as planning to text others before remembering I couldn’t. This showed me first, not just for myself but as an entire culture how reliant we on this technology, and how personalised it has become in the running of our daily lives. The cell phone is a personalised manifestation of social relations and efficiency rolled into one device, and has spread across the lives of billions in order to offer a simpler and easier means of communication; one in which is not limited by time or money, just reception.

Why do we feel the need to constantly upgrade and renew our technology? As the cell phone technologies have been inducted into many lifestyles, we also begin to see how these personalised items become fetishized, to appeal to our consumer wants, and tap into the idea that slimmer, faster, more advanced models are always available for consumption. It appears that marketing campaigns advertising such products are metaphors for human relationships also, and we begin to associate the idea that purchasing the latest iPhone, or blackberry, will result in some type of social success, or ease and freedom within our personal lives. As people we connect cell phones and their new features as essential, as upgrading technology is a physical form of improvement and gives the feelings of fresh, new and ease when applying these devices to our own lives.

mMmMm..... Apples.........

As I lay me down to sleep, I give Steve Jobs my soul to keep, and if I die before I wake my 4th gen Iphone they won't take..... I wanna be buried with the thing!

Have people begun to create this new society where technology has turned into the new religion? Honestly I think they have. Take the.... Well the Ianything really, Steve Jobs has created a huge fan base for his technology and more importantly the 'apple' brand itself, from the first generation Ipod to the brand new Ipad people across the world line up for hours in front of stores in the freezing cold or boiling sun just so they can say they got their Iwhatever on the very day it came out. Never mind that if they waited 6 months they could get it cheaper and a version without all the faults and bugs that any first generation piece of technology is bound to have.

You can see from each of these videos the changes that Jobs has made in the way he addresses his audience (followers, congregation?) as the popularity of his techno-toys grew over the years. From the low key presentation of the first Ipod to the over the top revel of the Iphone he has gone from merely introducing people to a new piece of technology to create a giant spectacle similar to the televangelists you would see at 5am on channel 2 in the mornings. The way Steve Jobs talks about these products and the way people react to them you'd think he had just discovered the cure for cancer and was planning on giving it to the world at half price. Because at the end of the day, no matter how crazy people go for these products, they are JUST a computer or JUST a phone, they just happen to look a little sleeker and sexier than some of the other products out there.

Ethical Issues around mobile privacy

From Lookout, a mobile privacy "watchblog" some alarming privacy statistics for mobile applications:

• 29% of free applications on Android have the capability to access a user’s location, compared with 33% of free applications on iPhone

• Nearly twice as many free applications have the capability to access user’s contact data on iPhone (14%) as compared to Android (8%)

• 47% of free Android apps include third party code, while that number is 23% on iPhone * third party code enables custom ads to be served and/or analytic behaviour tracking.

A user's location, call history and personal contact list is highly sensitive data, as opposed to web cookies stored in your browser. It's only bound to increase drastically over time. Here are a few "topics" to consider:

1. What implications does this have for mobile phone users? How about for advertisers and mobile providers?
2. Does this affect your opinion of favorite iPhone or Android apps -- in particular free ones? Should mobile app developers take it upon themselves to help reverse this trend?
3. How can we as users of this technology stop this violation of privacy? Through government, our purchasing decisions, or both?

Religion of Apple + iPhone

Excellent piece about the "Religion of Apple" and the 'Jesus' mysticism associated w/the iPhone.

Note: You'll need to be logged in @the Uni (or the library proxy) to access this to save and/or print

Marketing prof Russell Belk of York University and Gulnur Tumbat of San Francisco State study the parallels between Apple's fanbase and the followers of religion, assembling a framework for Apple's mystical mythology. They believe the entire Apple brand is based on four key myths. Heidi Campbell, a scholar at Texas A&M aggregated their work for a recent article

"How the iPhone became divine"

Here are Campbell's four key "myths" about Apple:

1. a creation myth highlighting the counter-cultural origin and emergence of the Apple Mac as a transformative moment
2. a hero myth presenting the Mac and its founder Jobs as saving its users from the corporate domination of the PC world
3. a satanic myth that presents Bill Gates as the enemy of Mac loyalists;
4. and, finally, a resurrection myth of Jobs returning to save the failing company...

Abstract: This article explores the labeling of the iPhone as the ‘Jesus phone’ in order to demonstrate how religious metaphors and myth can be appropriated into popular discourse and shape the reception of a technology. We consider the intertextual nature of the relationship between religious language, imagery and technology and demonstrate how this creates a unique interaction between technology fans and bloggers, news media and even corporate advertising.