ABSTRACT
How does the mobile internet shape how we relate to each other and produce culture? Gerard Goggin presents an overview of the shifting scenario of content production and consumption through mobile technologies and wireless connectivity. From smartphones to wearable sensors and driverless cars, an increasingly wide range of technologies is integrated with internet connectivity to generate architectures of sharing. Goggin discusses the cultural and political implications of this new “sharing economy” and shares his perspective on data policy. Since its inception as a public, commercial technology in the late 1970s, the
mobile phone has generated important and distinctive forms of communication. In this chapter, Gerard Goggin offers a retrospective on the development of the mobile internet, and on the new research tradition that emerged to study it. He discusses his own fascination for the mobile phone, especially as it has became a vital part of contemporary culture and media, and how it came to be part of the vibrant field of mobile communication studies. The concepts, methods, approaches and theories developed in the field are highly significant given the transformations still underway. Some aspects of the mobile are well entrenched, but in many respects the mobile phone remains a dynamic, unfinished new technology, revealed by emergent developments in mobile internet, wearable computers, mobiles and cars, sensor networks, the pervasive internet and the mobile’s place in sharing economies. While the internet is often described as a global network, it is not uniformly
implemented across different countries, or even within countries. Access to the technological infrastructure is asymmetric and even when similar, individuals will appropriate technologies in ways that are particular to their culture. As the appropriation of the mobile internet is so unique, which criteria must be applied to
define parameters for data sharing and appropriation? How does the politics of sharing impact individuals within a culture and across different cultures? Corporations, individuals and governments are involved to different levels in how the mobile internet and the “internet of things” is implemented, and each of these actors leverage policymaking in unequal ways. In this lecture, Goggin calls for a critical approach to the diverse interests at stake and suggests how they can be fairly represented in the regulation of data sharing.
