With the development of mobile devices, is there more or less equality in the society?

The mobile phone use individually and collectively has wider implications and can result in various contributions to the society at large. Based on our observations from the countries examined, the effect of these contributions can be classified into five categories. Mobile phones help to create an informative, connected, culturally innovative, participative, and converging society.

An informative society:Fast and useful information dissemination in the society is a widely observed contribution of mobile phones. Mobile phone, with its mobility and accessibility, not only plays an important role in individual’s life and close relations, but also shows an increasing significance in social network building, knowledge sharing, and creating a youth culture. It emphasizes that people as a node in the network of a society is connected to each other and can access to the variety of information relevant to them. It also improves the scale of public’s communication and benefits a larger group of people in the society.

A connected society: For mobile phone researcher Kate Fox, mobile telephony promotes frequent conversation with a tightly integrated social network of family, friends, colleagues and neighbors. In UK’s industrial society, for youngsters, mobile phones are seen as inevitable for keeping in touch with friends and social life at large.Also seen to play a role in matters of love and attraction, mobile phones are increasingly used in case of awkward situations such as asking out on dates and breaking up relationships. They also help maintain and perhaps broaden relationships by frequent, even trivial communication.

A culturally innovative society: the mobile phone can be very instrumental indirectly influencing certain other activities in our lives and creating new set of trends. This influence may change from designing new short-cuts in the language, to improving language skills; from adopting new ways of socialization via mobile phone games to even digitizing certain aspects of rituals and religious practices. Moreover, phones are increasingly being used as sources of music playback, instead of watches, in videoconferencing. In China, the succinctness of the language used together with the mobile platform has brought on a new literature type, Mobile Phone Novels. In India, the mobile phone has suited well with the prayer-and-ritual culture.

A participative society: Mobile communication has shown its power for collective activity as well as on individual life. Mobile phones can prevent isolating members of the society from social connection and empower ordinary citizens via convenience for connecting to others and availability of information. Individuals can be made active in participating to certain programs on TV (like American Idol) by voting. At other times, mobile phones can be a political instrument promoting democratic participation and organization of political activities.

A converging society: Mobile telephony is also contributing to the creation of a more equal society. Via communications and other economical and social benefits, some societies are witnessing a convergence in terms of bridging digital divide, especially for geographically dispersed countries such as Brazil and India. Empowering the individuals via confirming their identities, improving participation via better information dissemination and increasing social connections between different segments of the society are also contributions that create equality of opportunities and distribution of wealth.

Source: "Positive Contributions of Mobile Phones to Society", Ibrahim Kushchu, Mobile Government Consortium International, UK, at http://www.moba-ken.jp/kennkyuu/chousa/2006/research06_01/positive_mgci_eg.pdf, accessed at 26/04/2008

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