Create one reading response

Create one reading response (.DOCX or .PDF only)  that addresses the required readings/videos, demonstrating that you read/viewed the material and can make connections outside of the texts. These responses are informal and do not require additional sources. If you choose to use outside sources, be sure to include a link or citation indicating the original source.

Write a reading response that includes:

A short summary of the byte introduction and each text/video(s). If there are more than five texts/videos, you may choose to summarize only five. Why? To demonstrate that you read the required materials.
For your choice of at least one of the texts, write a discussion about a disparate connection between the texts and an idea or theme that you find provocative, something you find interesting about the material, how you could use the ideas in your own life, and/or how you see the ideas/discussion in the text applies to the larger world. Your discussion must include the significance of the invention of the telephone and its impact on personal communication. Why? To demonstrate your understanding of the material and your ability to communicate original ideas in writing.
A minimum of 600 words. Why? To allow an adequate discussion of the material.

In your reading response, discuss how you believe the findings of the study about annoying cell phone behaviors may have changed over the past decade.
Two scholarly articles that you identify on any topic related to mobile phone technology, less than five years old, from Google Scholar (Links to an external site.) or the Hunt Library and read the abstracts only. (These can be tangentially related to your research topic.) Discuss significance in your reading response and include the full APA or MLA citations at the end.

resources that need to be talked about:

https://www.informationweek.com/mobile-devices/bad-cell-phone-behavior-are-you-being-rude-

https://www.reviews.org/mobile/cell-phone-addiction/

https://versus.com/en/news/cell-phone-history

last resource is the attached pdf

teachers opening talk

Chances are that it is very, very close to you. It may be attached to you. When was the last time that you touched it? Chances are that you touched it within the last few minutes.

Count how many times you reach for your phone as you read this byte. Then add how many times it interrupts you by blinking, ringing, or vibrating. Add up the time. Then multiply by 365 to figure out how much of your year is spent in an intimate relationship with your phone.

The mobile phone or cell phone has become so ubiquitous in our culture that there is no need for the modifier any longer; we have of course essentially lost the need to distinguish them from landlines. It is simply your phone. If you are as much of the rest of the connected world in these pandemic times, you probably spend between 3 and 4.5 hours a day using your phone, checking it around 58 times. Phone usage appears to have risen significantly since pre-pandemic. (Check the Your Smartphone Is Hurting You (Elite Content Marketer) (Links to an external site.) website for the source of these statistics. Be skeptical. Go to original data sources for a thorough understanding of survey factors.) If you are a heavy user, your numbers are much higher. We have always had the same 24 hours in a day. (If you have a memory of life before mobile phones, take a minute and try to remember what you did with those four or so hours back then.)

While that estimate may or may not accurately reflect your own usage, if you are reading this byte, you are a part of the general demographic that is typically very fond of fondling phones.

Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, holding the famous shoe phone.
Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, holding the famous shoe phone. Image Source: Wikipedia
The many applications and functions that a phone now serves–browser, alarm clock, home security hub, music player, weather map, GPS navigator, flashlight, social media provider—seem to render even the label phone inadequate in terms of understanding the purpose of the device. Thank goodness we have a new label for it.

The [so-called] smartphone, of course, revolutionized the way we function in daily life, as well as changing our phone culture overall. A smartphone is generally considered a mobile “phone” that performs most or more of the functions of a personal computer. The first smartphone with a touch screen (Google, Versus) (Links to an external site.) was produced in 1994, but the debut of the iPhone 2G in 2005 was the fulcrum smartphone event that set the world alight with little glowing screens. Apple and Samsung (Statista) (Links to an external site.) are the leading smartphone vendors supplying the population with devices to, ostensibly, connect them to each other.

There are 7.9 billion people in the world (Worldometers) (Links to an external site.) and about 6.4 billion mobile phone subscribers in 2021, according to one report (Statista), (Links to an external site.) You are more likely to have one or more cell phones if you live in a developed country, as opposed to an underdeveloped or developing country. While personal technologies are not equally accessible across the world, the growing ubiquity of the devices is astounding. And the ways we use them have evolved as well.

We communicate through our phones in many ways now compared with the singular use of a voice call in the past. The most prevalent use of mobile phones is, not surprisingly— can you guess? (Urban Dictionary) (Links to an external site.) (It is that thing you just did a minute ago. That thing you are about to do after reading this sentence.) Yes. Texting.

There are three types of texting: short messaging service (SMS), multimedia messaging service (MMS), and over-the-top (OTT).

SMS is the most basic form of texting used today. It can contain only text and is limited to 160 characters and spaces. It was developed in the 1980s, and the first message was sent in 1992, when from a computer to a phone – “Merry Christmas.” (Not quite the weight of “What hath God wrought?”) In 2007, Americans first received more text messages than phone calls (Mashable), (Links to an external site.) marking a change in our communication behaviors. MMS is based on the same technology as SMS, but it allows the sender to include images, video, and other multimedia content.

OTT messages are apps such as iMessage and Whatsapp that allow users to send texts with multimedia content over the Internet rather than standard message carrier networks. Both sender and recipient must use the service, or the message will be sent as SMS/MMS. OTT apps often offer other services, like read receipts and typing indicators. OTT includes messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Apple’s iMessage, Facebook, and more, and is the fastest-growing type of messaging.

Marketers of course are very interested in the messaging platform, given that SMS texting has a 98% “open rate” (Techjury) (Links to an external site.) compared with emails, largely due to push notifications, and 60% of those users open their messages within one to five minutes of receiving them. Most certainly, incalculable and excruciating human time has been spent waiting for a text reply. (The writer of this sentence is waiting right now.)

The mobile phone seems to be the quintessential example of Marshall McLuhan’s theory about technologies becoming extensions of the human body (Google Scholar). (Links to an external site.) As well, the convergence of mobile devices and social media has radically changed how we connect both emotionally and physically with friends and partners. The constant connections that we keep through the device may affect our relationships in a myriad of inconspicuous ways, as you may see in your research. Since many college students have not experienced a friendship or intimate relationship without technology, it may be more difficult for them to identify its effects.

In the 1960s, McLuhan proposed that “electric circuitry” was becoming an extension of the central nervous system. His aphorism that the medium is the massage, and that technology is becoming an extension of ourselves, is becoming literally true as the phone becomes a physical appendage that extends all our senses in a tangible way.

By our love for these devices and our pain in their absence, by the way that we fondle the keys and spread images apart with our fingers, by the way that we speak into the devices seeking answers and connections with others, they seem to have become a part of our physical being. The growing use of wearable technologies, such as smartwatches, Bluetooth headsets, and health-related devices, increases the likelihood that the technologies may become less distinguishable from our physical bodies.

Broken heart drawing illustration on a white background.These technologies generally all have some ostensible practical use, but the overall effect of our growing affection and haptic relationship seems to lead to what Jonathan Franzen (2011) describes in a New York Times piece as a replacement of “the natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes – a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance – with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of self.”

“We tend to resist the idea that the phone has become an extension of our own bodies, similar to resisting the proposition that our mind and body constitute “electric meat,” flesh and bones propelled through time by pulses in our brains.” (The Revolution of Medical Imaging Technologies: Electric Meat and the Physicians’s Shifting Gaze – Lynn Koller, 2010) (Links to an external site.). We agree that our toes are fundamentally part of our body. However, if you had the choice of one of two things forever gone—the tip of your little toe or your mobile phone—which is more integral to your daily living and quality of life?

Ask someone how he feels about his phone, and you will likely hear either that the device is indispensable or that he wishes that it could be discarded or a combination of both. People who remember a time before phone ubiquity tend to be nostalgic and lament a loss of “real conversation,” but evidence shows they are using the devices more than ever. Younger people see the phone and texting, specifically, as indispensable. One college student recently commented, “If it weren’t for texting, I’d never have a date.”

Young man taking selfie while sitting on toilet bowl at home.Our phone comes to life when someone reaches out to us. It sings special songs sometimes for our lovers, friends, and foes; it beeps, lights up, and buzzes. It gives us the experience of a brief haptic sensation as it vibrates in our hands or resting on our laps. We put our lips closer to it than anything but food, drink, and those we kiss. The phone spends more time in our hands and touching our face than those we kiss or the nutrients we consume. We touch it thousands of ways a day. Our phones are covered with our sweat and fingerprints, and, according to a well-publicized study (Time Magazine)+ (Links to an external site.) in 2011, 1 out of 6 phones carry our fecal matter. Another researcher (Time) (Links to an external site.) found that cell phones carry 10 times the bacteria of most toilet seats. When we lose our phones, we lose our *&^%.