This edited volume is the first book-length study focusing entirely on mobile phone use in China. Drawing on examples from a wide range of contemporary situations in China and beyond, the contributors argue that the mobile phone is in fact an important means by which one can understand a rapidly changing China, and the developing culture of mobile phone usage reflects both the cultural norms and struggle of the people.

Through a theoretical comparison of usage in the West and in China, the editors assert the uniqueness of China 's experience, highlighting that Chinese society is being exposed simultaneously to a rapid process of industrialization and cyberization. The contributors maintain that such density of experience under a compressed period combined with a thick cultural heritage and a country still under a dictating rule provides a unique situation and offers deep insights into Chinese culture in general.

This work will be of great interest to all students and scholars of Asian communication studies, ICT and Chinese culture and society.

The disjuncture between the design intent of the developers of ICTs and the needs of the users has often led to surprising use of new technologies, as users have refused to become mere agents of the designers. Individual users have adopted their own uses of ICTs based on the complex webs of relations and meanings in which they function as social actors. Instead of adjusting these webs to new ICTs, they have fit the ICTs into their pre-existing social webs, often resulting in imaginative and creative uses of new technologies, not envisaged by the original designers. The contributions in this volume provide studies of such integrations of ICTs into the lives of human users, and demonstrate that such uses should not be regarded as 'faulty' or 'mistaken', merely because they 'fail' to meet the expectations of the original designers of the ICTs. Instead, human users should be given precedence over ICTs, and the creative uses of 'universal' technologies by individual users should be emphasised and studied, so as to move towards a better understanding and appreciation of the integration of ICTs into human lives. This book was originally published as special issue of The Information Society.

Everyday Innovators explores the active role of people, collectively and individually, in shaping the use of information and communication technologies. It examines issues around acquiring and using that knowledge of users, how we should conceptualise the role of users and understand the forms and limitations of their participation.

• To what extent should we think of users as being innovative and creative?
• To what extent is this routine or exceptional, confined to particular group of users or part of many people 's experience of technologies?
• Where does the nature of the ICT or the particularities of its design impose constraints on the active role that users can play in their interaction with devices and services?
• Where do the horizons and orientations of the users influence or limit what they want and expect of their ICTs and how they use them?

This book enables a cross-fertilisation of perspectives from different disciplines and aims to provide new insights into the role of users, drawing out both applied and theoretical implications

Migrants and diaspora communities are shaped by their use of information and communication technologies. This book explores the multifaceted role played by new media in the re-location of these groups of people, assisting them in their efforts to defeat nostalgia, construct new communities, and keep connected with their communities of origin. Furthermore, the book analyses the different ways in which migrants contribute, along with natives, in co-constructing contemporary societies ? a process in which the cultures of both groups are considered. Drawing on contributions from a range of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, psychology and linguistics, it offers a more profound understanding of one of the most significant phenomena of contemporary international societies ? the migration of nearly a billion people worldwide - and the relationship between technology and society.

The ever-increasing integration of technology and the human body is attracting attention from religious, business, and political leaders around the world, and the topic promises to be a significant social issue in the 21st century. In Mediating the Human Body: Technology, Communication, and Fashion, editors Leopoldina Fortunati, James E. Katz, and Raimonda Riccini bring together a thoughtful group of leading international scholars and analysts to explore the effects of new technologies on human beings. They focus specifically on the intersection of new communication technologies and the body, and offer novel insights based on recent theoretical progress and current research on new interpersonal technology. Through literary analysis, historical comparisons, analytical reports, and speculative interpretations, the contributors to this volume seek to understand the experience of the body as it is mediated among competing forces and intellectual domains. Arising from The Human Body Between Technologies, Communication and Fashion symposium held in Milan, Italy, contributions cover a wide array of topics and offer varied perspectives on how communication technologies are assimilated into people's lives, bodies, and homes, and thus become part of individuals' self-images and social relationships. From this multidisciplinary, multi-national base, the volume illuminates the sense and dimension of this interpenetration between body and technology. In its broad scope, the topics range from the wellsprings of consciousness to the use of technology as a fashion statement. Bringing together scholarship from a variety of disciplines, including communication, medicine, technology, and human-computer interaction, this distinctive anthology will provide new insights to scholars and advanced students exploring body-technology intersections and the attendant implications. Mediating the Human Body offers a unique contribution to future discussions, and will be relevant to continuing study and research in communication and technology, human-computer interaction, gender studies, social psychology, and design.

This edited volume is the first book-length study focusing entirely on mobile phone use in China. Drawing on examples from a wide range of contemporary situations in China and beyond, the contributors argue that the mobile phone is in fact an important means by which one can understand a rapidly changing China, and the developing culture of mobile phone usage reflects both the cultural norms and struggle of the people. Through a theoretical comparison of usage in the West and in China, the editors assert the uniqueness of China's experience, highlighting that Chinese society is being exposed simultaneously to a rapid process of industrialization and cyberization. The contributors maintain that such density of experience under a compressed period combined with a thick cultural heritage and a country still under a dictating rule provides a unique situation and offers deep insights into Chinese culture in general. This work will be of great interest to all students and scholars of Asian communication studies, ICT and Chinese culture and society.

The disjuncture between the design intent of the developers of ICTs and the needs of the users has often led to surprising use of new technologies, as users have refused to become mere agents of the designers. Individual users have adopted their own uses of ICTs based on the complex webs of relations and meanings in which they function as social actors. Instead of adjusting these webs to new ICTs, they have fit the ICTs into their pre-existing social webs, often resulting in imaginative and creative uses of new technologies, not envisaged by the original designers. The contributions in this volume provide studies of such integrations of ICTs into the lives of human users, and demonstrate that such uses should not be regarded as 'faulty' or 'mistaken', merely because they 'fail' to meet the expectations of the original designers of the ICTs. Instead, human users should be given precedence over ICTs, and the creative uses of 'universal' technologies by individual users should be emphasised and studied, so as to move towards a better understanding and appreciation of the integration of ICTs into human lives. This book was originally published as special issue of The Information Society.

The ever-increasing integration of technology and the human body is attracting attention from religious, business, and political leaders around the world, and the topic promises to be a significant social issue in the 21st century. In Mediating the Human Body: Technology, Communication, and Fashion, editors Leopoldina Fortunati, James E. Katz, and Raimonda Riccini bring together a thoughtful group of leading international scholars and analysts to explore the effects of new technologies on human beings. They focus specifically on the intersection of new communication technologies and the body, and offer novel insights based on recent theoretical progress and current research on new interpersonal technology. Through literary analysis, historical comparisons, analytical reports, and speculative interpretations, the contributors to this volume seek to understand the experience of the body as it is mediated among competing forces and intellectual domains. Arising from The Human Body Between Technologies, Communication and Fashion symposium held in Milan, Italy, contributions cover a wide array of topics and offer varied perspectives on how communication technologies are assimilated into people's lives, bodies, and homes, and thus become part of individuals' self-images and social relationships. From this multidisciplinary, multi-national base, the volume illuminates the sense and dimension of this interpenetration between body and technology. In its broad scope, the topics range from the wellsprings of consciousness to the use of technology as a fashion statement. Bringing together scholarship from a variety of disciplines, including communication, medicine, technology, and human-computer interaction, this distinctive anthology will provide new insights to scholars and advanced students exploring body-technology intersections and the attendant implications. Mediating the Human Body offers a unique contribution to future discussions, and will be relevant to continuing study and research in communication and technology, human-computer interaction, gender studies, social psychology, and design.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the human dimension of social robots by discussing both transnational features and national peculiarities. Addressing several issues that explore the human side of social robots, this book investigates what a social robot is and how we might come to think about social robots in the different areas of everyday life. Organized around three sections that deal with Perceptions and Attitudes to Social Robots, Human Interaction with Social Robots, and Social Robots in Everyday Life, it explores the idea that even if the challenges of robot technologies can be overcome from a technological perspective, the question remains as to what kind of machine we want to have and use in our daily lives. Lessons learned from previous widely adopted technologies, such as smartphones, indicate that robot technologies could potentially be absorbed into the everyday lives of humans in such a way that it is the human that determines the human-machine interaction. In a similar way to how today's information and communication technologies were initially designed for professional/industrial use, but were soon commercialized for the mass market and then personalized by humans in the course of daily practice, the use of social robots is now facing the same revolution of 'domestication.' In the context of this transformation, which involves the profound embedding of robots in everyday life, the 'human' aspect of social robots will play a major part. This book sheds new light on this highly topical issue, one of the central subjects that will be taught and studied at universities worldwide and that will be discussed widely, publicly and repeatedly in the near future.

Migrants and diaspora communities are shaped by their use of information and communication technologies. This book explores the multifaceted role played by new media in the re-location of these groups of people, assisting them in their efforts to defeat nostalgia, construct new communities, and keep connected with their communities of origin. Furthermore, the book analyses the different ways in which migrants contribute, along with natives, in co-constructing contemporary societies - a process in which the cultures of both groups are considered. Drawing on contributions from a range of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, psychology and linguistics, it offers a more profound understanding of one of the most significant phenomena of contemporary international societies - the migration of nearly a billion people worldwide - and the relationship between technology and society.

Everyday Innovators explores the active role of people, collectively and individually, in shaping the use of information and communication technologies. It examines issues around acquiring and using that knowledge of users, how we should conceptualise the role of users and understand the forms and limitations of their participation.

• To what extent should we think of users as being innovative and creative?
• To what extent is this routine or exceptional, confined to particular group of users or part of many people s experience of technologies?
• Where does the nature of the ICT or the particularities of its design impose constraints on the active role that users can play in their interaction with devices and services?
• Where do the horizons and orientations of the users influence or limit what they want and expect of their ICTs and how they use them?

This book enables a cross-fertilisation of perspectives from different disciplines and aims to provide new insights into the role of users, drawing out both applied and theoretical implications"