Customer Reviews

Cellphone: The Story of the World's Most Mobile Medium and How It Has Transformed Everything!

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A clear and approachable historical study of the impact of cellphones on society and culture, Levinson's text is an strong contribution to an emerging field of research. Although it is in some respects, tainted by the author's personal status, this also allows him to use his real world examples to paint a clear picture of what it is like to live in a world where you can always make contact with others, but can also always be contacted.
This is not to suggest that the text is in any way deficient in theory or research, which is woven carefully throughout the text, accompanied by an annotated and accessible Bibliography. At times it would have been helpful for referencing to be in-text, although his does digress where appropriate and helpful in-text. Levinson's strongest appeal is that we need to consider cultural relations around cellphone use (such as accepting the desire to ignore incoming calls) and not just legislate around them. This is an important point to consider, in societies where camera and video phones can be carried and used almost anywhere, provoking not just a degree of freedom, but public and private fears around invasions of privacy.
Thoroughly readable and filled with some wonderful imagry and creative language, Levinson's "Cellphone" is an important contribution in a time when technology is increasingly mobilising throughout our lives.

A comprehensive look at the jangling god that rules our lives. Levinson knows exactly what he's talking about, and his insights ring true (if you'll forgive the pun). There's a reason CNN, the Wall Steet Journal, and the New York Times keep turning to this guy for commentary. Anybody who's reading Stephen King's new novel CELL will find this a fascinating companion volume. About the only complaint I have is that this book deserved a much better cover.

I read this book and I find it very useful. I love how author easily transfer his thoughts on paper. it`s very easy to read and when you read it you remember it. I think this is a good book for your home library if you interested in the topic. I also recommended going to yodaphone.com for additional info on cell phone ratings

Paul Levinson is a gifted writer in my opinion. He has a lively style and conveys his ideas very effectively. When I bought this book, I thought (for some reason) that I was buying a book that recounted the development and technical characteristics of this powerful new media (the cellphone). It turned out that the book is devoted to the possibilities and potential of the cellphone along with some of the situations you are likely to encounter while using it. It compares the cellphone with other means of communication (mainly the computer with Internet access and the regular telephone) plus it presents some historical background on all these means of communication that preceded the cellphone. In the end, I am still glad that I bought and read this book.

Now for a book that's 180 pages long, it's BORING. This guy can ramble. And despite this he says very little in each page. It could all have been more succinct in 100 pages. He clearly knows a little about a lot about the phone but this book manages to avoid being coherent. Next he seems to write to serve the purpose of the title ensuring to find the cons in any other form of media he can bring up even if he contradicts his point by basically just describing exceptions to what his point was, while trying desperately to find pros in cellphones each and every time. These cons include computers, the internet, and blogging. These are all topics about which the viewpoint is misinformed and skewed and lacking. The book falls flat with padding from the start and apart from some info, it's generally not worth it.

This author like many technocrats seems to have an embedded ideology that a new technology--like the cell phone--is just so seductive that we poor weak humans just get caught up in the tidal wave of a medium that forces us to be taken with it. He also seems to take a rather ethnocentric view of the technology; to whit, that of its use among the typical middle class American. Popularity of cell phones, as far as I've observed, are intertwined with the country or culture that's adopted them. For example, in many European countries, where regular phone service is difficult to obtain, the cell is a natural convenience. Additionally, while the cell phone is a cultural phenomenon, it's also an economic one, and any visit to a Radio Shack demonstrates a huge profit accrues via "accessories," often needless gee-gaws for gadget hungry folks who don't know what to do with their money. In addition, why are there a plethora of cell phone service stores; you'll find about five in every strip mall. Why DON't you find stores for old-fashioned land-based ones? It has created an entire industry of technicians, phone styles, features, etc., that most people never use. Most cell phone dealers will tell you THEY don't know their phone features. Lock in 2-year contracts and you have a lot of suckers literally stuck with a lemon. Meanwhile, the cell phone industry--ever interested in using their product to facilitate human communication--was told by the FCC to develop a voice activated phone for the blind, a truly humane, significant and effective use of the medium. It took them 8 years to get around to it because the blind aren't a major purchasing group as opposed to business people and conversation-junkie teenagers. Playing into the minds of a consumer society, the flood of advertising for all frivolous cell phone uses and styles via media advertisement makes the average manipulated consumer buy needless things, or at least place a blueprint in their consciousness that brings that thing to the forefront rather than being integrated into the wealth of thoughts, beliefs and values a well-rounded individual shoud have. As such, this analysis of the cell phone like much (American)analysis of media, fails to acknowledge the economics of communications and its subtext. One major one is that the work day has expanded by two hours on average from the 1980's to the present. In a sense the cell phone is a good training tool for youth so that they can programmed to work longer hours that in previous days one would have had to take time off for, to whit, making doctors appointments, checking your portfolio, working while you're having lunch, breakfast, dinner. It's the perfect capitalist tool. Just as Amazon Prez Bezoes wants to make Amazon a "destination," the cell phone will become a needed appendage. What is most troubling with this book is that it doesn't address the powerful economic forces behind new technologies that find ways of insinuating the "need" for them into first our consciouses, then our behavior, and finally into our economy. I suppose, however, that when you combine the "gee whiz" mentality of the average American with the unemployment-proof tenured position of the professor (the author is a Professor of Communications, and I assume, a tenured one), the effect of economic forces is not on the radar screen. Maybe a few days work on the assembly line in a cell phone factory or being in daily life-threatening confrontations by knucklehead drivers more focused on their mouthpiece than the road during the morning & evening rush hours (something academics don't have to face) might add a little reality to this ivory tower perspective. October 2005 update: Front page, NYT. New portable technologies, particularly cell phones are implicated in lack of sleep among managerial class because they are 'on the clock' 24-hours a day. Sleep medications and applications at sleep clinics are at an all-time high. As Neil Postman pointed out years ago, media and technlogy have unintended consequences we cannot predict (unless your smart enough to think outside the box). An example of which is my grandfather who, living in NJ, was listening to the famous Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" on Halloween night in (1938?). He said it was an obvious put-on. I said "but millions of people fled in terror." He said, "Yes, millions of stupid people."

This book disappoints severely. Usually Levinson is well on target, but in this book he clearly misses the mark. His examples are massively out of date - in Israel the cellphone penetration was not 75% in 2004, back in 2003 it was 105%, etc etc etc. Levinson has taken a considerable knowledge of change in technology and then applied sloppy research and bad examples to the world of cellphones. Here in Singapore we are also in the over 100% penetration rates for cellphones, and several excellent books about the real impact of cellphones - such as Rheingold's Smart Mobs, Ahonen's m-Profits and Kopomaa's City in the Pocket will give you much more than this. What is most annoying, is that the book is mostly so badly off its topic.

I do not recommend this to anyone, not even fans of Levinson. Reading this book will guide you wrong. Luckily there are ample better books about the real world of cellphones. Don't buy it.