Pocket Wireless and the Shape of Media to Come, 1899–1922

Wythoff, Grant

doi:10.1162/grey_a_00106

Cited by 3 publications

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“…It may be narrated in part through the material histories of various communication technologies (Goggin, 2006;Ling, 2012), including advancements in pen and stylus tools, virtual keyboards, and handwriting recognition software. Developments in mobile media can also be located among cultural histories of electronics miniaturization (Cohen, 2016;Mills, 2011a;Spigel, 2001;Wythoff, 2013). In this article, I further complicate singular narratives about the evolution of mobile communication technologies by accounting for the portable computer (or "portables") market that emerged in the U.S. in the early 1980s, a time when personal computers first could be untethered from the desktop and become "computers to go" (Gajeway, 1986, p. 65;Marini, 1984, p. 47).…”

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confidence: 99%

Portables, luggables, and transportables: Historicizing the imagined affordances of mobile computing

Alper

2018

Mobile Media & Communication

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This article contributes to the history of “mobile media beyond mobile phones” by accounting for genres of portable computing (or “portables”) that emerged in the late 1980s. Though largely overlooked by historians of technology, these mobile, less-than-mobile, and relatively immobile devices helped shape the social and cultural uses of contemporary mobile communication. I argue that the technological capabilities of portables altered users’ expectations for how and where computers could be incorporated into daily life, be it near bodies, on hand, or at one’s fingertips. While the market for bulky portables dwindled by the late 1990s, as laptops and cell phones became more ubiquitous, these consumer electronics are nonetheless useful today for understanding the perpetual role of materiality and embodiment in how we conceive of the imagined affordances of mobile communication technologies.

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confidence: 99%