Joi Ito links to a report written for Motorola by social theorist Sadie Plant entitled “The Effects of Mobile Telephones on Social and Individual Life” that looks at some of the emerging social conventions about cellphone use and has lots of interesting nuggets of info about how people are using cellphones. Like that some research done in London that found that if a man and a woman were sitting together in a public place like a restaurant or bar, 32 percent of men were likely to have their phone on display (like by placing it on a table) while only ten percent of women did so, but when two women are sitting together, 38 percent of the time both women would have their cellphones out. She also talks about the different stances people adopt when they’re speaking on their phones. There’s the “speakeasy” pose, which involves “heads thrown back and their necks upright,” and then there’s the “spacemaker,” in which the “head is bowed and inclined towards the phone, and the whole body may be slightly leaning, as though into the phone or towards the disembodied voice.”
