The Mobile Phone and its Societal Impact - Literature Review

Posted by simonlenton on Tuesday 20 October 2009

It appears there is widespread debate on the true usefulness and benefit of the mobile phone and its impact upon society.

Chipchase (2007) suggests that the mobile phone gives us the ability to transcend space and time. The ability to be in one location and voice call somewhere else in the world enables us to transcend space, while the ability to text at our convenience and for those we are texting to pick up that message at their convenience demonstrates our ability to transcend time. The enormity of this development, Chipchase argues, is that ideas can spread quickly between individuals and when all 6.3 billion people on the planet are eventually connected, we will see how rapidly things can progress, in ways we cannot even conceive today.

However, others such as Burgess (2004) suggests that mobile phones are closely associated with crime, particularly in children. According to the British Crime Survey of 2000 recorded crime in the UK is falling year on year in every area other than in cell phone robberies.

While others, like Macfarlane, debate the risks imposed on our health by the masts used to send and receive electromagnetic impulses to such devices. Macfarlane claims that these masts affect the immune system and that “there is little doubt that exposure causes childhood leukemia.” Yet the National Radiological Protection Board (2005) released a report stating that there is ‘no hard evidence’ that the public is being ‘adversely affected by the use of mobile phone technologies.’

References

BURGESS, A., 2004. Cellular phones, public fears, and a culture of precaution. Cambridge Univ Pr.

CHIPCHASE, J., 2007. Jan Chipchase on our mobile phones. [Online Video] Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jan_chipchase_on_our_mobile_phones.html [Accessed 20 October 2009]

MACFARLANE, J., 2007. Phone Masts Warning. Sunday Express, [Internet] 28 November 2007. Available at: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/26552/Phone-masts-warning [Accessed 20 October 2009]

THE BOARD OF NRPB, 11 January 2005, Mobile phones and health, [Internet]. Available: http://www.hpa.nhs.uk/web/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1240212770058 [Accessed 18 October 2009].

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