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

Abstract

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.

Ensamblajes domésticos, infancia temprana y medios digitales

“…Segundo, partir del dispositivo permite formular preguntas en torno a su "impacto" (en el desarrollo, la organización de la vida familiar, etc.) y especialmente en torno a las affordances de cada clase de dispositivo digital (e. g. González-Patiño, 2011) en un contexto en el que estos dispositivos se transforman relativamente rápido (Alper, 2019), aunque implica el reto de examinar también prácticas y apropiaciones concretas. Finalmente, como argumento no menos relevante, aunque en apariencia más extra-científico, anclar la discusión en dispositivos particulares facilita el análisis de los medios digitales desde diferentes pánicos morales y debates sobre los riesgos de la sobreexposición a medios digitales durante la infancia.…”

Mobile media beyond mobile phones

“…The balance of visibility/invisibility has ethical and societal implications because these location-determination systems not only create different layers of visibilities, they also make certain groups of people more visible than others, or in some cases, misrepresent or mis-interpret their movements. In that sense, looking at not only the infrastructure itself, but the underlying political and economic concerns is of great importance and adds to users' imagining of affordances of mobile media (Alper, 2018).…”

Tethered women, mobile men: Gendered mobilities of typewriting

“…Such negotiations about portability, appropriate social norms, and public/private divides offer an instructive prehistory to a growing telework movement that began in the 1970s, and they gesture toward the ways that users have employed ICTs to construct individual and collective meanings of work and working environments. At the same time, thinking about typewriters as portable also adds nuance to histories of portability and mobility by identifying relevant precursors to laptop computers and mobile phones (Agar, 2013; Alper, 2018; Mari, 2017).…”