[Air-l] CFP: The Life of Mobile Data Conference

[Sean Smith]

The Life of Mobile Data:
Technology, Mobility and Data Subjectivity

April 15  16, 2004
University of Surrey, England

The rapid adoption and diffusion of mobile devices over the past decade 
have altered the way information is generated, organized and communicated 
about individuals and their lives. The construction of new mobile data 
profiles, and of mobile, informatic selves, hold the potential to transform 
what is organizationally and interpersonally meant by privacy, 
individuality, community, risk, trust, and reciprocity in a mobilizing, and 
globalizing world.

In order to examine these transformations, the RIS:OME project at the 
University of Surrey is hosting an international, interdisciplinary 
conference to address emerging social and cultural relations of mobility, 
privacy, identity, information and communication. This conference will 
bring together academic, industry and policy researchers and practitioners 
to critically address how mobile information and communications 
technologies structure relations of privacy, security, trust, power, 
identity and difference.

There are a number of questions that inform the themes of the conference. 
In what ways, for example, do mobiles reconfigure the relations of trust, 
risk, privacy and reciprocity embedded in organizational and interpersonal 
data-sharing? In what ways do mobiles contribute to the construction of 
identity and of the ‘information self’? What is the relationship between 
mobile data and the individual? Who owns and controls the emerging, 
individualized mobile data image? What roles do consumption and consumerism 
play in the social relations of privacy, trust and security? Is the 
development of mobile technologies associated with emerging relations of 
risk, uncertainty and privatisation?

What social, cultural and regulatory factors have influenced the generation 
of mobile data in different countries? How do these factors influence 
culturally specific understandings and practices of globalized and 
transnational privacy, risk and trust? Are regimes of information sharing 
and data protection patterned along axes of development and 
underdevelopment? What roles do national differences and political 
economies play in the construction of emerging mobile data relations? How 
are politics reconfigured within and between countries via mobile data 
technologies and changing mobilities?

What critical approaches can be brought to bear on our understanding of 
diversity, difference and resistance in the generation of mobile data? How 
can we account for the rapid uptake of mobile devices, and the development 
of mobile data sharing, both now and in the future?

We seek to bring critical perspectives to bear on the development and 
widespread uptake of mobile technologies and developments in information 
sharing and data profiling over the last decade. The conference organizers 
thus invite papers presenting empirically grounded and theoretically 
informed analyses of the social changes that mobile technologies and their 
data relations have brought about. Suggested themes could include, but are 
by no means limited to:
·       risk, trust and power in mobile information ownership, control, 
access and management
·       culturally specific patterns of informational trust and privacy
·       organizational structuring of mobile information paradigms
·       data subjectivity and the construction of identity through mobile 
technologies
·       mobile communications and emerging regulatory environments
·       privacy enhancing technologies, their problems, paradoxes and 
possibilities
·       privacy advocacy in the mobile environment
·       organizational and interpersonal information sharing
·       the lifecycle of mobile personal data: its generation, integration, 
profiling and mining
·       mobile surveillance, security and globalization
·       mobile data protection, data subjectivity and knowledge
·       information gathering and social memory

Papers and panels are invited that address the conference themes.
Paper length: 20 minutes. Panel presentations encouraged.

Timetable:
Submission of Abstracts: 500  700 words, October 31st 2003
Notification of acceptance of papers: December 12th 2003
Paper Submission: February 13th 2004
Registration Deadline: January 8th 2004

All conference correspondence should be sent to the conference organizers 
at the addresses below.
Further details of the conference will be posted to the RIS:OME website 
(http://risome.soc.surrey.ac.uk) as they become available.

Conference Fees, Registration and Accomodation

Details of conference fees and registration, and conference accommodation 
and availability, will be posted to the RIS:OME website as they become 
available. A limited number of rooms will be reserved on-campus for 
conference delegates. Requests for on-campus accommodation should be sent 
to the conference organizers in advance of the January 8th registration 
deadline.

Conference Organisers:

Nicola Green (n.green at soc.surrey.ac.uk)
Sean Smith (s.a.smith at soc.surrey.ac.uk)

RIS:OME Project (http://risome.soc.surrey.ac.uk/)
Department of Sociology,
University of Surrey
Guildford
Surrey GU2 7XH
United Kingdom
Phone: +44-1483-689-460
Fax: +44-1483-699-551


With the support of Intel Corporation, and the Department of Sociology at 
the University of Surrey.


_________________________________
Sean Smith
Research Fellow, Mobile Technologies,
Department of Sociology,
University of Surrey.
ph: +44 (0)1483 686 966
m:  +44 (0)7786 511 042