I would like to make a short note, with the danger of sounding childish but i think the amount of text

for this week was more than a non-english native is able to sufficiently read in the given time. Which resulted in me being only able to scan through the text and write an merely superficial assignment.

History of mobile media; small period, big impact, fast evolution, large history.
This weeks literature is aiming to give a vertical history of mobile media and mobile studies. The different perspectives on this history enable a broader view on the subject. Green and Haddon state that its hard to be complete in writing a history of technology (2009, p.17). While Durhams text can be used to argue that the history of mobile media are just a subset of the history of communication (1999). Fischer focuses on the social aspect of the telephone (non-mobile) from where some similarities with (use of) mobile phones can be drawn (1992). De Vries, at last, tries to get closer to an objective history by unearthing some myths surrounding the discourse of mobile media (2012).

Green and Haddon raise the question to their readers how they would define the mobile phone. Personally its a simple question: a mobile phone is a device that has its own power supply (battery) that enables it to be mobile and it has to be able to make phone calls. One might say SMS is also a key feature of mobile phones since landline phones werent able to send or receive SMS message in a textual form. But I think that a phone is basically a device to make phone calls. Off course, contemporary phones (almost right from the beginning) have a lot more features but for me this doesnt change the definition of the phone. It merely shows the big difference between mobile phones and mobile media. This difference has, in my opinion, a lot of effect to the field of mobile media studies as the aspects affected by mobile media are much bigger than those by the core-capacity to make phone calls on the go alone does.

As for the texts, I think that that a lot of features in mobile phones (and mobile media) are about communication. However, I believe that not all of the functions are. Some are about extending your brain or memory (reminders, calendars, photos). Some are about diversion or entertainment (games) and some are about information (dictionaries, logs, documents).

Fischer states that the phone was promoted to replace the telegraph (1992, p.65). One can easily see the benefits of the telephone over the telegraph. But, to me more importantly, it shows a flaw of the business of communication technology: a new technology should always replace an old technology. This is embedded in its being as an communication method. Communication technology demands its being used at both ends to carry out the actual act of communicating. Especially in the pre-digital age one could not (easily) connect a telegraph to a phone or television. In new digital media this presumption is less dominant, but last weeks texts show that the urge to replace is still in tact. I wonder why

Since the arrival of smartphones things have literally change a lot. The mobile phone, or actually the smartphone, has become a communication hub connecting a lot of different communication technologies and channels enabling their users to be available on a lot of levels: Today, mobile communication devices are virtually ubiquitous.7 Their ability to potentially connect anywhere, anytime, to anyone or anything in the informational network (de Vries 2012, p.134).

Concluding on the history-topic, I think mobile phones are just a part of the history of mobile media. And that history has only just begun. The history of the computer, the classic telephone, the library, board games all are part of this larger history but not what forms it.

Bibliography
Fischer, Claude S. 1992. America calling: a social history of the telephone to 1940 . Berkeley: University of California Press. Ch. 3 Educatng the Public p. 60 -85. Green, Nicola, and Leslie Haddon. 2009. Mobile communicatons: an introducton to new media. English ed, Berg new media series. Oxford ; New York: Berg. (Ch.2 History and Industry p. 17 -32). Peters, John Durham. 1999. Speaking into the air: a history of the idea of communicaton. Chicago, Ill. ; London: University of Chicago Press.Ch.5 The Quest for Authentc Connecton, or Bridging the Chasm p. 177-225. (This is a rather long chapter, if youre really running short on tme just focus on the subsecton Reach Out and Touch Someone: The Telephonic Uncanny startng at p. 195 to 205.)

Vries, Imar O. de. 2012. Tantalisingly Close: An Archaeology of Communicaton Desires in Discourses of Mobile Wireless Media. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Available from: htp://oapen.org/search?keyword=9789089643544 . Ch.4 Mobile Communicaton Dreams p. 125162.