From a talk on BlackBerries and iPods I gave for Mount Royal College’s Faculty Professional Development retreat in Banff. The two technologies were discussed somewhat separately. The focus of the Blackberry part of the presentation was the idea that this type of device allows for the withdrawal from co-present interactions to engage in technologically-mediated communication via these devices. The focus of the iPod portion of the presentation was on the way that iPods are used as a way of inhabiting the spaces that people move between. Using anthropologist Marc Auge’s idea of “ordeals of solitude” in non-places (spaces without meaning formed in relation to certains ends such as transport and commerce), I argued that iPods provide a way of aestheticizing the spaces their users move through and thus help them cope with an underwhelming environment.

1. http://www.flickr.com/photos/vjragvan/2288085722
Being Unnatural:
iPodolatry, Crackberries,
and the Absent
Presence
Randy Connolly,
Department of
Computer Science &
Information Systems
1

2. http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithwj/923735564
What are the two most important computers on
the planet?
The iPod and Blackberry are the key (and perhaps
first) cultural icons of the 21st century
2

3. They “are the supreme creation of an era,
conceived with passion by unknown artists, and
consumed in image if not in usage by a whole
population which appropriates them as a purely
magical object.”
Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1957)
3

4. Just as some people say that a
butterfly‟s flight might change the
weather ...
... So too these small computing devices
may be the cause of large-scale
changes in our way of life ...
4
://www.flickr.com/photos/philidor_2001/216570753

5. iPods and Blackberries (or any mobile email
device) are ostensibly quite different devices.
One is clearly a communication tool, generally for
business, ...
... while the other is a tool for mainly solo
pleasure.
Yet the two devices share some
common outcomes, which are the
focus of this talk.
5

6. What is a Blackberry?
6

7. Launched in 1999 by the Canadian
firm Research In Motion (RIM), the
Blackberry acts as both a phone
and personal organizer.
7

8. It‟s main attraction is that
sends and receives emails
Received emails are
pushed out to the device
when it is on.
8

9. If the device is on, then no time is wasted starting up
a computer, logging in, connecting to mail server,
waiting for email to download, etc.
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http://img129.imageshack.us/img129/3857/waitingforwindowstobootjt1.jpg

10. Not as yet commonly used by students ...
10

11. ... but a ubiquitous one in
the corporate world.
11

12. Devices like the Blackberry are part
of a environment characterized by
mobile working, continual
communication, and a network of
information flows.
12

13. It is praised by its users as a tool of efficiency.
13

14. It provides control over a user‟s communication needs.
14

15. It enables responsiveness and
accessibility at any time or
place.
15

16. One of the main benefits claimed by its
users in two recent studies is that they
allow its users to be productive in “dead
time.”
16

17. In one study by JoAnn Yates of MIT Sloan School
of Business, perhaps the most common example
of this benefit stated by the 30 managers using
the device in her study, was that they could
respond to email at their children‟s soccer games.
17

18. Users also see Blackberries
has being unobtrusive
compared to a cell phone ...
18
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahaglund/237089726

19. In the popular press, there has been a
certain backlash, with the trope of
Crackberry being perhaps the most
common.
19

20. In Yates‟s study, 90% of the respondents
reported some degree of compulsion ...
... characterized by a difficulty in refraining from
checking the device at regular intervals.
In her study, the average time in between
“checks” on the device was 7 minutes.
20

21. The popular press is filled with anecdotes of users
being unable to separate themselves from the
devices...
21

22. ... or tales of businesses that have
banned the “Blackberry prayer” in
meetings
22

23. 23

24. ... or talk of aggrieved spouses
who resent the intrusiveness of
the devices
24

25. 25

26. Yates found that her subjects praised how the device
provided the opportunity to control the form of
information delivery and response.
Unlike a cell phone, the user is in control of when he or
she responds.
While users may interrupt what they were doing to
check an incoming message, the interruption is
experienced as choice.
“As email knits deeper into life, individuals experience
interruption as individually negotiated rather than
coercive.”
26

27. Yates‟s subjects also praised the device‟s ability to
maintain life-work balance by time-slicing (using
multiple, very small amounts of time to do work)
Catherine Middleton in her
study of Canadian
Blackberry users found that
the always-on nature of the
device was not seen by its
users as an infringement of
personal time, but as a way
to make work better fit one‟s
personal needs.
27

28. Yet when pressed, Yates‟s subjects also recognized that
more work activities had been downloaded into personal
time.
“one of things that I‟ve noticed more and more is that
people will Blackberry me in the evening, you know,
after 8:30 in the evening. I‟m pretty much settled in and
people know that it sits next to me, my cup of tea is
there, my knitting is in my lap, something‟s on television
and I just take care of business. „Linda, do you think you
can order this and this for me?‟ Fine. Sure.”
JoAnn Yates, “CrackBerrys: Exploring the Social Implications of Ubiquitous Wireless Email Devices”
28

29. These devices thus enable:
• work intensification (do more things in the same time)
• work extension (work longer)
29

30. Study subjects have commonly noted that since a
Blackberry allows people to be available at all times and
places, it soon becomes expected that they are available
at all times ...
... and all places.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitrot/2050189753/
30

31. The devices do seem to perpetuate and extend
the work cultures that the users are trying to
control with these same devices.
“Actions that appear as reasonable attempts to
control a demanding job can encourage further
engagement, resulting in increased, rather than
decreased, workload”
Catherine A. Middleton 31

32. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bondidwhat/478252978/
S.L. Jarvena study of users‟ attitudes towards
mobile computing devices found that they were
encapsulated by a series of contradictory
beliefs:
Work and leisure
Empower and enslave
Engage and disengage
Connect to others
and
Distance oneself from others
32

33. It is the idea of engaging with remote
others while at the same time
disengaging with those nearby that is of
particular interest to me ...
33

34. My research over the past decade
has focused on the progressive
privatization of life through
technologies that appear to
increase the domain of social
connection but yet in reality perhaps
do the opposite.
34

35. In these Blackberry studies, there were numerous
observations from its participants about the frustration
of being in meetings or discussions with individuals
who frequently disengaged from the conversation
to instead engage with their Blackberries.
35

36. Kenneth J. Gergen, professor of Psychology at
Swarthmore College, uses the term absent presence
to characterize the withdrawal from co-present
interactions to engage in technologically-mediated
communication .
“One is physically present, but is absorbed by a
technologically-mediated world of elsewhere. ...
Increasingly, these domains of alterior meaning
insinuate themselves into the world of full
presence ...
The present is virtually eradicated by a
dominating absence.”
36

37. The iPod
37

38. MP3 player launched by Apple in 2001
Slow sales until 2004
Over 140 M sold to date
38

39. What is the iPod‟s main appeal?
Is it listening to music on the go?
39

40. Is it the quantity and the choice?
“I used to have to plan ahead and think of
the several CD‟s I‟d want to listen to on a
given day.
Now there‟s none of that...if I‟m irritable,
bored, and fed up then I might choose an
album rather than shuffle through all my
library.
Otherwise I might choose my 25 most
played, or recently played playlists ...”
Michael Bull, “Investigating the Culture of Mobile Listening: From Walkman to iPod”
40

41. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mariagusa/2193187341/
MP3 technology has produced a
massive change in consumer‟s
expectations of what mobile sound
technologies can do.
Users are now able to
“fine-tune the relationship
between mood, volition,
music and the
environment in ways that
previous generations of
mobile sound
technologies were
unable to do.”
41

42. “Well, I think I’ve come to the
conclusion that overall I feel
pretty out of control in my life.
Stores play music to get me to
buy more. Work tells me what to
do and when. Traffic decides
how quickly I get from here to
there. Even being in public place
forces me to endure other
people and their habits. ... I
didn‟t realize how much I yearn
for control ... The iPod has
given me some control back.”
Michael Bull, “Iconic Designs: The Apple iPod”
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43. http://www.flickr.com/photos/zenzenok/5411050/
Is it the shuffle mode?
The random nature of
shuffle-mode playing
allows users to re-discover
their music by juxtaposing
it in novel places or
circumstances.
Author Steven Levy calls it
“spooky just-rightness”
“It makes me wonder if the
random function on the
machine is just an
unbiased algorithm or if
my iPod is somehow
cosmically connected to
me.”
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44. http://www.flickr.com/photos/24162233@N04/2294614578
Is it the design?
“The design is just flawless. It feels
good, to hold it in your hand, to rub
your thumb over the navigation
wheel and to touch the smooth
white surface.”
Michael Bull, “Iconic Designs: The Apple iPod”
44

45. Is it all four?
The iPod appears to provide a feeling of
control and security via personal listening
that has an “ethos of infinite choice,
incomparable mobility, and ideal design.”
Kathleen Ferguson, “The Anti-pod”
45

46. Where is it used?
Anywhere, of course, ...
46

47. Perhaps the most common, and for me the most
important, way that iPods are used is as a way
of inhabiting the spaces that people move
between.
47

48. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ninety6dpi/453519546/
Michael Bull, Sussex
University:
“the solitary movement of
people through the city
each day represents a
significant yet under
researched aspect of
contemporary urban
experience.”
48

49. Theodor Adorno recognized that
people in modern societies spend
more and more of their time in “the
realm of the ever-same.”
http://www.theorycards.org.uk/card07.gif
49

50. Henri Lefebvre in the spirit of Adorno
added that “we wish to have the
illusion of escape [from the realm of
the ever-same] as near to hand as
possible.”
50

51. French anthropologist Marc Auge
makes a distinction between
places and non-places (spaces
without meaning formed in
relation to certain ends such as
transport and commerce).
Non-places are increasingly
characteristic of space in
contemporary societies.
As a result. “the individual
consciousness is subjected to
entirely new experiences and
ordeals of solitude, directly
linked with the appearance and
proliferation of non-places.”
51

52. In an era where there is more and more routine,
always-the-same time spent in non-places
(such as when commuting), the iPod provides a
way of deroutinizing time.
Users can control and manage their thoughts
and feelings via auditory stimulus as they
manage space and time.
iPods provide a way of aestheticizing the
spaces their users move through and thus
help them cope with an underwhelming
environment.
52

53. “iPod use creates a form of accompanied
solitude for its users in which they feel
empowered, in control and self-sufficient as
they travel through the spaces of the city.”
Michael Bull
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/nycarthur/398394913

54. http://www.flickr.com/photos/amundn/566209527/
The sociologist Richard Sennett in his 1994 book
The Body and the City in Western Civilization
argued that the Churches within a city once
structured the urban space and thereby created a
zone of immunity in which the citizen could feel
secure.
54

55. The iPod creates a mobile zone of
security within the user‟s ears as
they move between the spaces of
the city that lacks Places such as
churches and contains more and
more Non-Places.
55

56. So what is not to like, then, about
the iPod?
56

57. The iPod, by dint of the power of private sound,
mediates the experience of any space the user
is in.
This means that for iPod users, any space can
be subjectively experienced as a non-place.
57

58. The iPod (and to a lesser extent, the Blackberry
as well) increases both the ability to achieve
(and the desire of its users for) accompanied
solitude.
58

59. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsgeorge/327826652/
Richard Sennett on the loss of social
capital during the 20th century
transportation revolution:
“individual bodies moving through urban
space gradually became detached from
the space in which they moved, and
from the people the space contained. As
space becomes devalued through
motion, individuals gradually lost a sense
of sharing fate with others.”
59

60. My worry is that the iPod and the
Blackberry will continue this process of
detachment from the public places that
connect us to others and to our common
histories.
Michael Bull:
“Users tend to negate public spaces through
their prioritization of their own technologically
mediated private realm.”
The history of modern communication and
transportation technologies is that of a gradual
retreat away from public places to that of the
private consumption of goods.
60

61. As users become immersed in their own sound
and communicative bubbles, the significant
spaces they habitually pass through and inhabit
may increasingly lose significance for them and
progressively turn into the non-places of daily
life.
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62. Randy Connolly,
Department of Computer Science & Information Systems
Mount Royal College, Calgary
62