Cellular Degeneration

Bibliography

Recommended websites that provide further reading on this new technological phenomenon. These websites provide information specifically relating to the cultural and societal influence of the device, and how generally, it has affected our lives.

This website provides an academic response to the cell phone issue—providing very specific psychological and research-based informative analysis on these issues. The website is sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and provides minutes from a forum held at this institution that specific questions and concerns about the cell phones and its effect. The content of this website is provided by two professors, Dr. James Katz, and Dr. Jing Wang, both renowned speakers and published authors on this specific issue. The site is firstly a transcript of the aforementioned forum, but it also provides an audio recording of the event. Dr Katz holds that Cell Phones are dangerously constructing insulating "micro-cultures", and suggests that this promotes a complex and exclusive walled society. The other professor, Dr. Wang, addresses the Cell Phone effect in China, which has among the highest ownership population: roughly 500 Million. She describes how this technology has affected the youth in China, implying an ominous tone to her analysis. In addition to the two professors providing a general lecture on their respective views, the site also provides a listing of questions and comments posed by an audience, along with responses by these two professors.

This site, entitled "Mobile Society" is a comprehensive resource on the various societal impacts sustained by Cell Phone proliferation. The site is designed like a portal, or a dashboard, and includes various links to articles, other websites, commercial interests, statistics, and much more. The Bibliography section of this site provides a direct link to hundreds of full-text articles that range from research, to country-specific commercial analysis, to both positive as well as negative arguments for or against the pervasiveness of mobile technology. The site is truly a one-stop location with an enormous wealth of information available on this subject. Also included in this website is a forum where anyone can contribute columns or comments towards a discussion. As stated in the about section of this website, this site’s mission is to "include all publicly available information on studies about the interaction between mobile phones and contemporary society." The site doesn't hold to one particular stance on whether the cell phone usage has had a more positive or more negative impact on society, but provides resources that support either of those arguments.

This article focuses on solely the propitious effects of Cell Phone ubiquity. The site defends the cell phone by suggesting that it has promoted a more secure society, where no matter where you are, a cell phone--by the click of a few buttons,--can allow you to communicate with family, friends, or to signal for emergency help. Furthermore, the article suggests that cell phone innovation and feature-rich phones have alleviated through the use of technology some of the burdens in pre-mobile times. For example, the incorporation of cameras in a cell phone as an easy and time-saving device, allowing one to immediately share photos with another person. Or, the capacity to store data in a cell phone, making it effortless to look up a phone number or email address through the phone’s built-in address book. The article is completely one-sided in its analysis since not a single negative criticism is mentioned or addressed; however, it is still a valuable resource since it does provide a litany of positive arguments, as well as reliable and authoritative content.

This is an interesting article that talks about gossip as a “non-trivial pastime”, and something “essential to human society”. The article suggests that mobile communications have augmented our capacity and predilection to gossip and in turn, promotes a more healthy society by fostering “natural communication patterns”. This article is nice because it focuses just on this one specific benefit of cell phones, and by doing so, offers a very intense and thorough analysis in this regard. The article is well-written and provides a litany of outside sources to corroborate the authors claim, bolstering the article’s validity and reliability. In addition to conventional talking on cell phones, the article also addresses “texting”, and suggests that it is equally important and equally propitious, as it allows one to “maintain social bonds even [in the absence of] time and energy”. What is nice about this article is that it’s well-written and is saturated with quotes, statistics, facts, and obvious intense-research; it makes for a good complement to anyone doing research on the societal impact of cell phones.

Cellular Degeneration

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Bibliography