The Smartphone

A technology reporter’s behind-the-scenes history of the device that has taken over our lives. How have smartphones shaped the way we socialize and interact? Who tracks our actions, our preferences, our movements as recorded by our smartphones? These are just some of the questions that Elizabeth Woyke, a journalist who has covered the industry for Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, and MIT Technology Review, addresses in this book. Including photos and an in-depth look at the early decades of mobile communication, The Smartphone offers not only a step-by-step account of how smartphones are designed and manufactured but also a bold exploration of the darker side of this massive industry, including the exploitation of labor, the disposal of electronic waste, and the underground networks that hack and smuggle smartphones. Featuring interviews with key figures in the development of the smartphone and expert assessments of the industry’s main players—Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung—The Smartphone is the perfect introduction to this most personal of gadgets. Your smartphone will never look the same again. “The author does a good job explaining the relationships among the makers, carriers and developers, and she delivers an engrossing chapter on design trends.” —Kirkus Reviews

The smartphone is often literally right in front of our nose, so you would think we would know what it is. But do we? To find out, 11 anthropologists each spent 16 months living in communities in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, focusing on the take up of smartphones by older people. Their research reveals that smartphones are technology for everyone, not just for the young. The Global Smartphone presents a series of original perspectives deriving from this global and comparative research project. Smartphones have become as much a place within which we live as a device we use to provide ‘perpetual opportunism’, as they are always with us. The authors show how the smartphone is more than an ‘app device’ and explore differences between what people say about smartphones and how they use them. The smartphone is unprecedented in the degree to which we can transform it. As a result, it quickly assimilates personal values. In order to comprehend it, we must take into consideration a range of national and cultural nuances, such as visual communication in China and Japan, mobile money in Cameroon and Uganda, and access to health information in Chile and Ireland – all alongside diverse trajectories of ageing in Al Quds, Brazil and Italy. Only then can we know what a smartphone is and understand its consequences for people’s lives around the world.

A twenty-first-century guide for anyone who has access to a smartphone. This how-to manual looks at specific ways you can create social change through the tap of a screen. Filled with examples of successful hashtag campaigns, viral videos and new socially conscious apps, the book provides practical advice for using your smartphone as a tool for social justice and online activism. This is the first book in the PopActivism series, which includes Can Your Outfit Change the World? and Can Your Conversations Change the World?

The Smartphone Paradox is a critical examination of our everyday mobile technologies and the effects that they have on our thoughts and behaviors. Alan J. Reid presents a comprehensive view of smartphones: the research behind the uses and gratifications of smartphones, the obstacles they present, the opportunities they afford, and how everyone can achieve a healthy, technological balance. It includes interviews with smartphone users from a variety of backgrounds, and translates scholarly research into a conversational tone, making it easy to understand a synthesis of key findings and conclusions from a heavily-researched domain. All in all, through the lens of smartphone dependency, the book makes the argument for digital mindfulness in a device age that threatens our privacy, sociability, attention, and cognitive abilities.

Addresses how tech empowers community organizing and protest movements to combat the systems of capitalism and data exploitation that helped drive tech’s own rise to ubiquity. Our smartphones have brought digital technology into the most intimate spheres of life. It’s time to take control of them, repurposing them as pathways to a democratically designed and maintained digital commons that prioritizes people over profit. Smartphones have appeared everywhere seemingly overnight: since the first iPhone was released, in 2007, the number of smartphone users has skyrocketed to over two billion. Smartphones have allowed users to connect worldwide in a way that was previously impossible, created communities across continents, and provided platforms for global justice movements. However, the rise of smartphones has led to corporations using consumers’ personal data for profit, unmonitored surveillance, and digital monopolies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon that have garnered control over our social, political, and economic landscapes. But people are using their smartphones to fight back. New modes of resistance are emerging, signaling the possibility that our pocket computers could be harnessed for the benefit of people, not profit. From helping to organize protests against the US-Mexico border wall through Twitter to being used to report police brutality through Facebook Live, smartphones open a door for collective change.

In recent years, smartphones and digital platforms have become essential to our lives and are now inextricably interwoven into the everyday practices of millions, especially young people. Focusing on smartphone practices and experiences of youth today, this volume is the result of empirical research based on focus groups and in-depth interviews with young people aged 18-30. Grounded in media theory and analyzed through a blended lens of media and science and technology studies, the book offers detailed and fascinating insights into the everyday use of smartphones. Topics covered include the role of the smartphone as material technology, its use in interpersonal relationships, photographic practices, music and consumer practices, along with the deconstruction of the notion of smartphone ‘addiction’.

The smartphone movie-making revolution is here! With the right knowledge and minimal equipment, everyone now has the power to make great films with their smartphone. Whether you're an aspiring filmmaker, vlogger, journalist, educator, charity worker, student, business professional, or an individual with a passion for making films, you'll find the information in this book to be an invaluable resource. You too can make great movies with the smartphone you already own and produce award-winning films for minimal cost. This book includes 28 chapters filled with expert knowledge on various topics, such as the best equipment for your budget, choosing the right camera and editing apps, lighting, sound, camera techniques, technical advice on smartphone movie-making, guides to the best video camera and editing apps, reviews on the top smartphone movie-making equipment, digital video concepts, detailed information on composition, lighting, sound recording, video editing, going live, and posting videos to the web. Additionally, the book covers how to transfer smartphone videos to a computer, filming for broadcast television and cinema, the best social media platforms for video, and budget smartphone filmmaking kits. With this comprehensive guide, you'll have all the tools and knowledge necessary to unleash your creativity and produce professional-quality films using your smartphone.

Transnational Communities in the Smartphone Age: The Korean Community in the Nation’s Capital examines the durable ties immigrants maintain with the home country and focuses in particular on their transnational cultural activities. In light of changing technologies, especially information and communication technologies (ICTs), which enable a faster, easier, and greater social and cultural engagement with the home country, this book argues that middle-class immigrants, such as Korean immigrants in the Washington-Baltimore region, sustain more regular connections with the homeland through cultural, rather than economic or political, transnational activities. Though not as conspicuous and contentious as other forms of transnational participation, cultural transnational activities may prove to be more lasting and also serve as a backbone for maintaining longer-lasting connections and identities with the home country.