ABSTRACT
One of the recurring concerns in the book so far has been that of principles and forms of contemporary composition/text-making. The constant emphasis on social conditions represents the view that the social is prior: the facilities/affordances of the new technologies can only be used along the lines that the social conditions make possible. The assumption of agency by individuals in conditions of the dominance of the (neo-liberal) market over the state is one effect of that. The waning of stability and canonicity in terms of knowledge, genres, discourses is another effect. An ideology of choice pervades the semiotic domain as much as it does others. So the interest in the communicational and social effects of contemporary technologies – here in the shape of a mobile device – is a concern in this book; it is a widely shared interest and concern. In particular this is so in relation to contemporary or likely future practices and forms of text-making.
