Moving Data - by Pelle Snickars & Patrick Vonderau (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The iPhone has revolutionized not only how people communicate but also how we consume and produce culture. Combining traditional and social media with mobile connectivity, smartphones have redefined and expanded the dimensions of everyday life, allowing individuals to personalize media as they move and process constant flows of data. Today, millions of consumers love and live by their iPhones, but what are the implications of its special technology on society, media, and culture?

Featuring an eclectic mix of original essays, Moving Data explores the iPhone as technological prototype, lifestyle gadget, and platform for media creativity. Media experts, cultural critics, and scholars consider the device's newness and usability--even its "lickability"--and its "biographical" story. The book illuminates patterns of consumption; the fate of solitude against smartphone ubiquity; the economy of the App Store and its perceived "crisis of choice"; and the distance between the accessibility of digital information and the protocols governing its use. Alternating between critical and conceptual analyses, essays link the design of participatory media to the iPhone's technological features and sharing routines, and they follow the extent to which the pleasures of gesture-based interfaces are redefining media use and sensory experience. They also consider how user-led innovations, collaborative mapping, and creative empowerment are understood and reconciled through changes in mobile surveillance, personal rights, and prescriptive social software. Presenting a range of perspectives and arguments, this book reorients the practice and study of media critique.

Review Quotes

A rich and detailed picture of the impact of the iPhone on our society.--Zvezdan Vukanovic "International Journal of Digital TV"

Like the iPhone itself, Moving Data provides a panoply of options for the interested reader. Detailed without falling into homage, this volume should appeal to technology historians and cultural critics alike.--Ingrid Erickson "Mobile Media and Communication"

Readers interested in the impact of digital media will find in this collection a rich source of new ideas and perspectives.-- "PsycCritiques"

Studies of the iPhone are rare... This makes Moving Data particularly welcome. Its contents are a revelation.-- "New Media Society"

The well-written essays in this wonderful little book range from insightful to downright fun...Highly recommended.-- "Choice"

Like the iPhone itself, Moving Data is personal, mobile, and globally networked. Established and emerging scholars from media, information, and cultural studies track the transnational trajectory of the iPhone. These essays are accessible to a general reader even while keeping in mind the telling differences between contacts and critique, apps and analysis.--Richard Grusin, director, Center for Twenty-First Century Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

The iPhone is the first landmark twenty-first-century invention. Not only the embodiment of a 'disruptive technology, ' with its 'applications' reversing the semantics of hardware to software, it also confirms that we need mobility studies to succeed--if not to supersede--cultural studies. Moving Data nimbly signals these shifts and serves as a surefooted road map to new territory.--Thomas Elsaesser, author of The Persistence of Hollywood

About the Author

Pelle Snickars is head of research at the National Library of Sweden and coeditor, with Patrick Vonderau, of The YouTube Reader. His work can be found at www.pellesnickars.se.

Patrick Vonderau is associate professor in the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University and a cofounder and board member of NECS-European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (www.necs.org).