[Air-L] New book on mbile communication

[richard.ling at telenor.com]

Hello all,

In the shameless promotion department. . . 

My latest book has just come out.  It is entitled New Tech, New Ties:
How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion 

http://www.amazon.com/New-Tech-Ties-Communication-Reshaping/dp/026212297
9/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205006909&sr=1-1

The PR blurb on the back of the book reads:
The message of this book is simple: the mobile phone strengthens social
bonds among family and friends. With a traditional land-line telephone,
we place calls to a location and ask hopefully if someone is "there";
with a mobile phone, we have instant and perpetual access to friends and
family regardless of where they are. But when we are engaged in these
intimate conversations with absent friends, what happens to our
relationship with the people who are actually in the same room with us?
In New Tech, New Ties, Rich Ling examines how the mobile telephone
affects both kinds of interactions--those mediated by mobile
communication and those that are face to face. Ling finds that through
the use of various social rituals the mobile telephone strengthens
social ties within the circle of friends and family--sometimes at the
expense of interaction with those who are physically present--and
creates what he calls "bounded solidarity."
Ling argues that mobile communication helps to engender and develop
social cohesion within the family and the peer group. Drawing on the
work of Emile Durkheim, Erving Goffman, and Randall Collins, Ling shows
that ritual interaction is a catalyst for the development of social
bonding. From this perspective, he examines how mobile communication
affects face-to-face ritual situations and how ritual is used in
interaction mediated by mobile communication. He looks at the evidence,
including interviews and observations from around the world, that
documents the effect of mobile communication on social bonding and also
examines some of the other possibly problematic issues raised by tighter
social cohesion in small groups.

Rich L.