COMM733 The Mobile-As-Mirror : Reflecting Real Worlds Through Applications
MA student HANNAH DORAN critically explores the impact of digital cultures on everyday life . By specifically focusing on how we live our lives through the various apps on our mobile phones , the idea of the mobile phone screen becoming a mirror that can reflect different worlds is offered . It was particularly interesting exploring this idea against the backdrop of the pandemic where our mobile phone screens are being used more than ever .
COMMUNICATIONS ENGLISH AND MEDIA
There are at least 3.5 billion active smart phones currently in use in the world today , that is equivalent to nearly half of the world ’ s population owning one ( Turner 2019 ). The title of a song by Future Utopia particularly springs to mind , that indeed we are ‘ Children Of The Internet ’ ( Thefutureutopia 2020 ). It is hard to understate the extent to which our everyday lives have been impacted by not just digital media but the cultures they bring with them . Paul Frosh ’ s disturbing scenario outlined in the opening chapter to his book The Poetics of Digital Media ( 2019 ) simply compounds our evident bind to technology in the 21st Century . We are called by Frosh to imagine waking up in a world where our mobile phones have “ no reception ”, our laptops are unable to “ connect to the internet ”, our radios only produce the “ sound of static ” and even our “ old landline telephone ” does not work . Indeed , as Frosh suggests , we would assume “ it is the end of the world ” ( Frosh 2019 : 1 ). The extent to which our lives are lived , duplicated , and reflected through our mobile phones , particularly through certain types of applications on our mobiles , is of interest in this essay . By taking this broad premise I will focus more specifically on how we can live different lives on certain apps . I will look at how these differing experiences affect our sense of self or selves , before finally exploring to what extent we can purely live out our lives on our mobile phones .
In section one of this essay , I will reflect on Katie Warfield ’ s post-phenomenological assertion of the mobile phone being a “ multi-stable technology ”, and position that her “ cellphone-as-mirror ” ( Warfield 2017 : 79 ) can be seen not only as a mirror to see ourselves back in , but a mirror that reflects lived experiences . This mobile-as-mirror will then anchor the proceeding discussions in section two
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