This book investigates the ways in which the mobile telephone has transformed societies around the world, bringing both opportunities and challenges. At a time when knowledge and truth are increasingly contested, the book asks how mobile technology has changed the ways in which people create, disseminate, and access knowledge. Worldwide, mobile internet access has surpassed desktop access, and it is estimated that by 2022 there will be AN excess of 6 billion mobile phone users in the world. This widespread proliferation raises all sorts of questions around who creates knowledge, how is that knowledge shared and proliferated, and what are the structural political, economic, and legal conditions in which knowledge is accessed. The practices and power dynamics around mobile technologies are location specific. They look different depending on whether one chooses to highlight the legal, social, political, or economic context. Bringing together scholars, journalists, activists and practitioners from around the world, this book embraces this complexity, providing a multifaceted picture that acknowledges the tensions and contradictions surrounding accessing knowledge through mobile technologies. With case studies from Hong Kong, South Korea, India, Syria, Egypt, Botswana, Brazil, and the US, this book provides an important account of the changing nature of our access to knowledge, and is key reading for students, researchers, activists and policy makers with an interest in technology and access to knowledge, communication, social transformation, and global development.

This comprehensive volume presents Richard M. Billow’s unique contributions to the theory and technique of psychotherapy, along with summaries and explications by the volume’s editor, Tzachi Slonim. Through their behavior, therapists define the clinical culture: how relationships are to be regarded and the depth to which narratives and exchanges may be considered. Known for his integration of Bion’s metapsychology with contemporary psychoanalysis, Billow extends our understanding of "relational" to include the emotional relationships people have with individual and collective ideas, and the behaviors attached to these ideas. "Doing our work" (the title of the last section) involves the therapist’s whole being, including cognitions, dreams, words, deeds, and very presence—mental and somatic. Drawing on Lacan, Billow suggests that therapeutic work ought to include a willingness to penetrate other minds with provocative, controversial ideas. His clinical vignettes portray a masterly clinician-in-action, describing his evolving feelings, thoughts, and assessments. Billow’s intimate knowledge of Bionian theory, coupled with his down-to-earth demeanour and clear writing, allows him to explicate and expand upon Bion’s important contributions in a manner accessible to the novice and expert therapist alike. With one eye on therapeutic process, and the other on each participant including the therapist himself, Billow invites each of us to change our minds.

How wireless technology is redefining the relationship of communication, technology, and society around the world—in everyday work and life, in youth culture, in politics, and in the developing world. Wireless networks are the fastest growing communications technology in history. Are mobile phones expressions of identity, fashionable gadgets, tools for life—or all of the above? Mobile Communication and Society looks at how the possibility of multimodal communication from anywhere to anywhere at any time affects everyday life at home, at work, and at school, and raises broader concerns about politics and culture both global and local. Drawing on data gathered from around the world, the authors explore who has access to wireless technology, and why, and analyze the patterns of social differentiation seen in unequal access.They explore the social effects of wireless communication—what it means for family life, for example, when everyone is constantly in touch, or for the idea of an office when workers can work anywhere. Is the technological ability to multitask further compressing time in our already hurried existence? The authors consider the rise of a mobile youth culture based on peer-to-peer networks, with its own language of texting, and its own values. They examine the phenomenon of flash mobs, and the possible political implications. And they look at the relationship between communication and development and the possibility that developing countries could "leapfrog" directly to wireless and satellite technology. This sweeping book—moving easily in its analysis from the United States to China, from Europe to Latin America and Africa—answers the key questions about our transformation into a mobile network society.

The Cell Phone Reader offers a diverse, eclectic set of essays that examines how this rapidly evolving technology is shaping new media cultures, new forms of identity, and media-centered relationships. The contributors focus on a range of topics, from horror films to hip-hop, from religion to race, and draw examples from across the globe. The Cell Phone Reader provides a road map for both scholars and beginning students to examine the profound social, cultural and international impact of this small device.

In this timely volume, James E. Katz, a leading authority on social consequences of communication technology, analyzes the way new mobile telecommunications affect daily life both in the United States and around the world. Magic in the Air is the most wide-ranging analysis of mobile communication to date. Katz investigates the spectrum of social aspects of the cell phone's impact on society and the way social forces affect the use, display, and re-configuration of the cell phone. Surveying the mobile phone's current and emerging role in daily life, Katz finds that it provides many benefits for the user, and that some of these benefits are subtle and even counter-intuitive. He also identifies ways the mobile phone has not been entirely positive. After reviewing these he outlines some steps to ameliorate the mobile phone's negative effects. Katz also discusses use and abuse of mobile phones in educational settings, where he finds that their use is eroding students' participation in class even as it is helping them to cheat on exams and cut class. Parents no longer object to their children having mobile phones in class in a post-Columbine and 9/11 era; instead they are pressing schools to change their rules to allow students to have their phones available during class. And mobile phone misbehavior is by no means limited to students: Katz finds that teachers are increasingly taking calls in the middle of class, even interrupting their own lectures to answer what they claim are important calls. In keeping with the book's title, Katz explores the often overlooked psychic and religious uses of the mobile phone, an area that has only recently begun to command scholarly interest. Magic in the Air will be essential reading for communications specialists, sociologists, and social psychologists.

Winner of the 2014 Bonnie Ritter Book Award Winner of the 2013 James W. Carey Media Research Award As unprecedented waves of young, rural women journey to cities in China, not only to work, but also to “see the world” and gain some autonomy, they regularly face significant institutional obstacles as well as deep-seated anti-rural prejudices. Based on immersive fieldwork, Cara Wallis provides an intimate portrait of the social, cultural, and economic implications of mobile communication for a group of young women engaged in unskilled service work in Beijing, where they live and work for indefinite periods of time. While simultaneously situating her work within the fields of feminist studies, technology studies, and communication theory, Wallis explores the way in which the cell phone has been integrated into the transforming social structures and practices of contemporary China, and the ways in which mobile technology enables rural young women—a population that has been traditionally marginalized and deemed as “backward” and “other”—to participate in and create culture, allowing them to perform a modern, rural-urban identity. In this theoretically rich and empirically grounded analysis, Wallis provides original insight into the co-construction of technology and subjectivity as well as the multiple forces that shape contemporary China.

"In this timely volume, James E. Katz, a leading authority on social consequences of communication technology, analyzes the way new mobile telecommunications affect daily life both in the United States and around the world. Magic in the Air is the most wide-ranging analysis of mobile communication to date. Katz investigates the spectrum of social aspects of the cell phone's impact on society and the way social forces affect the use, display, and re-configuration of the cell phone. Surveying the mobile phone's current and emerging role in daily life, Katz finds that it provides many benefits for the user, and that some of these benefits are subtle and even counter-intuitive. He also identifies ways the mobile phone has not been entirely positive. After reviewing these he outlines some steps to ameliorate the mobile phone's negative effects. Katz also discusses use and abuse of mobile phones in educational settings, where he finds that their use is eroding students' participation in class even as it is helping them to cheat on exams and cut class. Parents no longer object to their children having mobile phones in class in a post-Columbine and 9/11 era; instead they are pressing schools to change their rules to allow students to have their phones available during class. And mobile phone misbehavior is by no means limited to students: Katz finds that teachers are increasingly taking calls in the middle of class, even interrupting their own lectures to answer what they claim are important calls. In keeping with the book's title, Katz explores the often overlooked psychic and religious uses of the mobile phone, an area that has only recently begun to command scholarly interest. Magic in the Air will be essential reading for communications specialists, sociologists, and social psychologists."--Provided by publisher.