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<font size=2><u>MIT COMMUNICATIONS FORUM<br><br>
<br>
</u></font><font size=6 color="#C0C0C0"><b><a name="top"></a>Cell Phone
Culture<br>
<br>
</font>Thursday, November 17, 2005<br>
5:00 - 7:00 p.m.<br>
Bartos Theater, Media Lab<br>
20 Ames Street, MIT<br><br>
<br>
Abstract <br><br>
</b>No contemporary cultural artifact embodies the genius and the
disruptive excess of capitalism as clearly as the cell phone. Ubiquitous
in most developed societies in Europe, the Americas and Asia, the cell
phone has become a laboratory some would say an asylum for testing the
limits of technological convergence. Less a telephone today than a
multi-purpose computer, cell phones are game consoles, still cameras,
email systems, text messengers, carriers of entertainment and business
data, nodes of commerce. Particular age cohorts and subcultures have
begun to appropriate cell phones for idiosyncratic uses that help to
define their niche or social identity. This Forum will examine the cell
phone as a technological object and as a cultural form whose uses and
meaning are increasingly various, an artifact uniquely of our time that
is enacting, to borrow the words of a contemporary novelist, a ceaseless
spectacle of transition.<br><br>
<b>Speakers<br><br>
James Katz </b>is<b> </b>professor of communication and director of
Rutgers University's Center for Mobile Communications Studies, which he
founded in 2004. Katz' research focuses on how personal communication
technologies, such as mobile phones and the Internet, affect social
relationships and how cultural values influence usage patterns of these
technologies. His books include<i> Machines That Become Us: The Social
Context of Personal Communication Technology </i>(Transaction, 2003,
editor) and <i>Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk and
Public Performance</i> (Cambridge, 2002, co-edited with Mark Aakhus). He
is also the author of <i>Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access,
Involvement and Expression</i> (MIT Press, 2002, with Ron Rice).
<br><br>
<b>Jing Wang </b>is professor of Chinese cultural studies, and the head
of Foreign Languages & Literatures at MIT. Her research interests are
focused on contemporary Chinese popular culture and its relationship to
marketing and advertising. She worked at Ogilvy in Beijing for two
summers as a consultant for the Planning Department, and is currently
finishing up a book manuscript [<i>Brand New China: Advertising, Media,
and Commercial Culture</i>]. Wang's presentation on cell phone branding
and youth culture in China is based on some of her work at Ogilvy.
<br><br>
<font size=2>Free and open to the public. <br><br>
More information:
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum" eudora="autourl">http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum</a><br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=1>Brad Seawell, program coordinator<br>
MIT Communications Forum<br>
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum" eudora="autourl">http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum</a><br>
14N-430<br>
Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>
Cambridge, MA 02139<br>
voice 617-253-3521<br>
fax 617-253-6105<br><br>
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