ABSTRACT
The past 20 years have seen enormous changes in the props and furniture of everyday life and everyday social interaction in Ireland, symbolized most strikingly by the ubiquity of mobile phones, the proliferation of hand-held computer-based devices, and the growing quaintness and eccentricity of the continued use of the landline. Just as it has been impossible to escape the ubiquity of the television screen in the past – standard objects in pubs, hotel rooms, medical clinics, shops and supermarkets – so too it has become impossible to avoid mobile devices, whether in the street, at the cinema, on public transport, in prisons or, most tellingly of all, in your own hand or pocket.
