Magic in the Air: Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social Life / Edition 1

by James E. Katz

Overview

In this timely volume, James E. Katz, a leading authority on social consequences of communication technology, analyzes the way new mobile telecommunications affect daily life both in the United States and around the world.

Magic in the Air is the most wide-ranging analysis of mobile communication to date. Katz investigates the spectrum of social aspects of the cell phone's impact on society and the way social forces affect the use, display, and re-configuration of the cell phone. Surveying the mobile phone's current and emerging role in daily life, Katz finds that it provides many benefits for the user, and that some of these benefits are subtle and even counter-intuitive. He also identifies ways the mobile phone has not been entirely positive. After reviewing these he outlines some steps to ameliorate the mobile phone's negative effects. Katz also discusses use and abuse of mobile phones in educational settings, where he finds that their use is eroding students' participation in class even as it is helping them to cheat on exams and cut class. Parents no longer object to their children having mobile phones in class in a post-Columbine and 9/11 era; instead they are pressing schools to change their rules to allow students to have their phones available during class. And mobile phone misbehavior is by no means limited to students: Katz finds that teachers are increasingly taking calls in the middle of class, even interrupting their own lectures to answer what they claim are important calls.

In keeping with the book's title, Katz explores the often overlooked psychic and religious uses of the mobile phone, an area that has only recently begun to command scholarly interest. Magic in the Air will be essential reading for communications specialists, sociologists, and social psychologists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765803351
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	08/15/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

James E. Katz is professor and chair of the Department of Communication at Rutgers University where he also directs the Center for Mobile Communication Studies. In 2009, he was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Twentieth Century Communications History (Italy). Prior to coming to Rutgers, Katz headed a social science research unit at Bell Communications Research. He has two patents in the telecommunications field and has held fellowships at Harvard and MIT. He is the author of Magic in the Air: Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social Life and Connections: Social and Cultural Studies of the Telephone in American Life, published by Transaction.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements, Part 1: Mobile Communication and Social Transformation, Part 2: Telecommunication and Information in Society: Past, Present, and Future, Index

Editorial Reviews

"A pioneering figure in mobile studies, James Katz offers us a fascinating, authoritative, and profoundly human assessment of this enchanting technology's place in communications and society. Katz guides us on an illuminating journey through religion, public space, fashion, education, information and even 9/11 — an indispensable account of the mobile's past, present, and futures."—Dr Gerard Goggin, ARC Australian Research Fellow Editor, 'Media International Australia', Department of Media and Communications, The University of Sydney NSW 2006

From the Publisher