ABSTRACT
Rich Ling, Nanyang Technological University
The major transition that came from mobile communication and now the smartphone is that it made all of us individually addressable. Rather than being available based on whether there was a landline phone nearby, we became continually available to one another regardless of time or place. This development changed the situation with regards to how we plan things, organize logistics, and interact socially. A couple of other issues have also arisen. One is that this type of communication is increasingly structured into social interactions in the sense that alternative ways of coordination are being dismantled or ignored. The other is that new communication tools are taking us beyond the one-to-one style of interaction that was seen in the earlier use of mobile communication (i.e., texting and calling one other person), and we are moving to a situation where we can have multisided interactions with many other individuals in chat groups (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc.).
