ABSTRACT
Mobile technologies and the cultural patterns of their usage have evolved at a tremendous speed, but the elementary characteristics of usage of mobile communication technologies have remained stable. This chapter describes the transformation of time-space experience on the level of actual mobile phone usage. It discusses new interrelated communicative practices relevant to time-space experience with the help of actual mobile phone calls and short message service (SMS) messages. The chapter addresses three new communicative practices that are central aspects of mobile phone usage: mobile real-time coordination of social action, extended seamless accountability of mobile actors, and distant, mobile co-presence. Mobile communication gets its specific sense through its reflexive linkage to the surrounding social world since it is an inseparable part of the real-time ongoing activities in which the parties are engaged. Discussion of the consequences of mobile communication has emphasized the new flexibility of social arrangements and softening of schedules.
