Mobile media

Whilst we commonly think of mobile media as being essentially a new, 21st century phenomenon, it is important to note that it is not an entirely new concept. Indeed the mobility and portability of media or as Paul Levinson calls it in his book entitled Cellphone “the media-in-motion business” has been a process in the works ever since the “first time someone thought to write on a tablet that could be lifted and hauled – rather than on a cave wall, a cliff face, a monument that usually was stuck in place, more or less forever”. Levinson’s statement here brings into focus contemporary mobile media devices such as mobile phones and PDA’s which are commonly represented and thought of as not only entirely new and original products of mobility but also the only source of portable media from which we can obtain information and communicate with one another.

While mobile phone and PDA’s independent technologies and functions may be new and innovative (in relation to changes and improvements in media capabilities in respect to their function what they can do when and where and what they look like, in regard to their size and shape) the need and desire to access and use media devices regardless of where we are in the world has been around for centuries. Indeed Paul Levinson remarks in regard to telephonic communication that it was “intelligence and inventiveness applied to our need to communicate regardless of where we may be, led logically and eventually to telephones that we carry in our pockets”. Levinson in his book goes on to state that the book, transistor radio, Kodak camera are also bearers of portable information.