All the studies I’ve read about how and why people use SMS say that it’s used for expressive communication with small groups of close friends and relatives.
It’s nicely put like this: SMS is to tell you I miss you.
Is that why mobile phone users have no trouble taking up the idea that they might read or write a poem on their mobile phone?
(There are examples from the UK, India and Japan, that have all come about separately.)
And more than that, the Finnish study in the Katz and Aakhus book suggests that some people sometimes write, read, send and store poems on their mobile phones without being prompted to do it by any kind of formal cultural event.
They just do it because it’s what your mobile phone lets you do.
But are there other kinds of vernacular, creative, writing and reading that people don’t want to do on their mobile phone?
Is the public, discursive, prosey nature of deskbound blogging, published for strangers or people we have a very weak tie to at best (but who can’t get too physically, dangerously, close to us) something that would seem like too much of an invasion if it was delivered to your mobile phone.
And is there a difference between using your mobile as a recording tool for a deskbound service - which is what moblogging and descendants always described - and letting something onto, into, your mobile phone.
If it’s a poem it might be OK, because we think of poems as coming from someone’s heart (which is why people reach for them at times of joy or grief), but a restaurant review?
[Those aren't rhetorical questions. I hope people do want to do prose writing and reading on their mobile phone. Though of course they might just want to watch TV, which would be a real shame.]
