Comunicazione mobile e vita quotidiana

Of the major systems shaping the social ties of the modern age, the telephone is undoubtedly the one that has been studied the least, so much so that the first historical and social studies on the telephone appeared almost a century after it was invented, thus earning it the label of "neglected medium". The scanty research carried out into non-technological features of mobile technology stands in stark contrast to the social dimension of the phenomenon and the role it plays in making possible to move from the present dynamics of computer-mediated communication to the future perspectives of terminal portability. It therefore becomes of the most importance to understand how mobile technologies are currently and actually used and made meaningful by the social actors in their daily lives (in other words one must understand who uses mobile technologies, how, where and who with and what significance the users invest mobile technology with), how mobile technologies affect and impact on social and communicative interaction, and to what extent they are rooted in culture. This essay, therefore, sets out to investigate the way in which mobile phones play a part in identity-shaping and user-socialization processes, and how usage models and construction of significance activated by the users define and redifine identity and functionality of the mobile phone, generating specific processes for the social shaping of this new soci-technological artifact.