Blogpost #3: Mobile Media (Alexandria Tang)
This week’s topic of mobile media will centre around the reading by Ito, Okabe and Anderson. The reading talks about the ways in which portable information devices mediate people’s relationships with urban infrastructure, locations and services. In particular, the reading identifies the underlying social practices in 3 specific cities, namely Los Angeles, London and Tokyo, that drive interfacing with urban locations, which I find is relatable in the context of Singapore.
To illustrate, the concepts of ‘cocooning’, ‘encampment’ and ‘footprinting’ in public spaces were introduced. The proliferation of portable media devices in this day and age has sheltered us from engaging with public spaces, providing a private space within the confines of the urban space. This is known as cocooning. Next, camping is much more common now that people bring their portable media to public places of their choice where they feel some sort of affinity with. Lastly, footprinting allows for personalisation in public and semi-public places. These 3 phenomena of cocooning, encampment and footprints are relevant in Singapore and in particular, to me, as people are now carrying increasingly rich and immersive media, causing highly crowded locations to become spaces of private media consumption.
As a typical Singaporean student, you would have definitely visited a Starbucks outlet at least once to study instead of for the usual coffee break that other people (who are not tied down with schoolwork and exams) visit Starbucks for. Frequenting Starbucks for studying purposes is something that I have been doing in my many years as a student. As such, this act of visiting Starbucks to do work, to me, captures all 3 of the concepts mentioned in the reading.
Firstly, going to Starbucks, a public place that is constantly filled with people no matter the time of the day, getting good seat and finally pulling out my study materials which includes my laptop, illustrates encampment. Typically, I would frequent the same Starbucks outlet and choose the same few seats as these seats are much more hidden and have the power socket nearby. On top of these factors, I also usually spend a considerable amount of time (4 – 6 hours). As such, in terms of encampment, I feel comfortable here and find this particular place desirable enough for me to do my work productively outside of my house. While at Starbucks, I would usually plug in my air pods to listen to my own music while doing my work. This helps me to create my own private space within the confines of the constantly bustling Starbucks outlet as I am able to drown out all the surrounding noise, as well as escape any form of social interaction that may occur with other patronisers of Starbucks. With my air pods, I am cocooning myself within the ambient environment so that I can have a productive studying session. Lastly, frequenting Starbucks means that each time I go there to study, I would be buying a cup of coffee to accompany me as I do my work. This is a form of footprinting as each time I purchase a drink, it gets recorded in my Starbucks card (a digital one on my mobile phone and a physical one in my wallet) and I earn a certain number of stars which contributes to my membership and rewards levels. These transactions motivate me because after collecting a considerable number of stars, I am able to enjoy perks such as a free drink, as well as upgrade my membership level to the Gold level. Additionally, these transactions help me to establish and maintain a relationship with Starbucks as I do not want to lose my Gold status.
Overall, this week’s reading has allowed me to link the concepts that I have been exposed to, to the simple act of visiting Starbucks to do my work, showing how these concepts of cocooning, encampment and footprinting can be linked and interconnected. Additionally, these concepts have made me realise how visiting Starbucks, an urban and public space that is typically very crowded, to do my work, has been heavily mediated by the proliferation of portable information devices to the point where I can transform it into a private space for myself so that it is much more productive for me to get work done here instead of at home.