ABSTRACT
To borrow from Katz and Aakhus (2002: 1), we can say the mobile phone, rather than the telephone in general as they claim, has become a fixture of everyday life in the twenty-first century. This at least is the case in Mainland China, as shown in Table 1.1 of this volume, where we can observe how land phone users are outnumbered by mobile phone users despite the fact that the former developed at a much earlier time. Precisely put, mobile telephony as an information and communication technology (ICT) device is a comparatively recent phenomenon. But whereas its development as a communication tool in the first world is more of a linear progress, the emergence and popularization of the device in China is a leapfrog because of the acute economic advancement of this communist regime. The Western sociological analyses have built up a handful of substantive studies concerning the cyberization of society, and of course there are mounting studies related to industrialization. However, a direct transplant of the literature to depict the Chinese scenario may call for some cautions, as China has been experiencing a process of compressed modernity which makes her experience in evolving into the modernization route somewhat different from that of the West. The nature of such compressed modernity is characterized by the rapid industrialization and cyberization of the place in almost a simultaneous manner. This process we name a ‘double juggernaut ride’, and the current discussion is to elaborate this claim.
