Annotated Bibliography
Andrew, O. (2004, September 15). Picture messaging-It’s worse than you thought but might get better. Retrieved February 28, 2009, from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/15/mms_flop_needs_fix/
This article provided a comparison between picture messaging and plain old text messaging. In addition, the data from this article shows that the network providers earned the main revenue from SMS; even they have promoted the camera phone for a while. This means phone camera still couldn’t be used broadly by consumers as old text message. The author gave several reasons to explain why picture messaging service could not be such successful as text messaging service is. The author thought the main reason is due to the limitation of the resolution of phone cameras, i.e. the insufficient megapixels. Phone cameras couldn’t replace many functions that traditional cameras do, such as printing photos, because it needs high megapixels to print acceptable quality of photos. Besides, it is not ready for the network service providers to support such high data rate transmission with acceptable rates. Therefore users do not use their camera phones to print and transmit photos except showing the images to their friends on the phones.
AT&T (2009), 1946: First Mobile Telephone Call. Retrieved February 25, 2009, from http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/46mobile.html
AT&T and its Bell Laboratory have played key roles in the history of mobile development. In this website, AT&T.com gives a lot of information about the history of technical progress in mobile communications. The first mobile telephone call was made in 1946, when a driver used a mobile telephony on his car to call. After that the mobile communications gets the spotlight in the development of communications till now. One of the most important things in this article is to show the history of cellular network invention, and how it was being established and developed. The cellular idea was conceived in 1947 by D.H. Ring at Bell Labs, came into reality in the 1970s due to the invention of microprocessors. After several years’ trial, AT&T got a commercial license from FCC to provide mobile service in 1983. Moreover, you can get a brief and clear idea what a cellular network is and how it works from this passage.
Bedell, P. (2001). Wireless crash course. McGraw-Hill telecommunications. New York: McGraw-Hill.
The book provides basic background information to quickly jump-start in my literature review and involves the elements of wireless systems that should be understood in wireless world. The author gives an excellent introduction of analog cellular network devised by AT&T and its Bell Lab and then smoothly transits to today’s digital cellular networks (GSM, CDMA, TDMA). The author presents his materials in an interesting way to lead readers going through the important concepts of radio frequency, cell sites, and switching in cellular networks as well as the regulatory processes that affect all wireless service providers and equipment manufacturers. I also found valuable information in chapter 17 that introduces the history and current status of camera phones. The camera phone is the consequence of converging and enabling technologies and brings a new wave in mobile business. I cited its data showing how many mobile phones with a built-in camera in 2006 to demonstrate how popular the camera phone is.
Christensen, C. M., Anthony, S. D., & Roth, E. A. (2004). Seeing what’s next: Using the theories of innovation to predict industry change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
The disruptive technology theory in Christensen’s book is highly relevant to my discussion issue that the third-generation cellular network might be too good and expensive for current consumers to adopt. Christensen’s theory explained a phenomenon that why a current leading technology would be left behind even its performance is superior to disruptive innovative technologies. The author gives many examples from semiconductor, airline, health and telecommunications industries to prove his viewpoint. I found his theory can also be applied to mobile communications to show that current performance of mobile networks exceed consumers’ demand and therefore its market share is less than the expectation of mobile industry even it is ready for several years. Mobile companies might need to find a way to modify the 3G networks such that it can provide a compromised performance and transmission data rate but with much less cost. If doing so, with a higher probability, people will transfer to this intermedium solution and these pioneering users are willing to experience new applications and service. Once the population of pioneering users reach to a critical mass, the 3G communications could really come into our life.
Cowan, R. S. (1997). A social history of American technology. New York: Oxford University Press.
The book gives a careful, effective historical review of American technology. In general, it covers several prominent technologies such as transportation, automobile, and telecommunications. It covers the history from the early 17th century to the present and examines creative ideas, important invention and key individuals during this period that have shaped the technological developments in American history. The author tells us how technological progress has always been closely related to social development and how the society components respond to this technological advancement vice versa. I cited this book in my paper as a reference to historical development of early mobile telephony not only in terms of technological progress and but also from the angle of social culture.
Fischer, C. S. (1992). America calling: A social history of the telephone to 1940. Berkeley: University of California Press.
This book is a great reference for me to review the development of telephony in early days. This book is not a technical book. The author examines the history of telephone development not only in terms of the technological progress of the landline. He provides lots of material to demonstrate how the society reflected to this technology in those days. Therefore, the book is more like a social history of the adoption of the telephone from its invention in the 1870s until the 1940s, when it had become widely, but not universally used in the U.S. It shows how the landline diffused into every corner in the world and reflects how the marketing men treated this technology as a business tool resulting in a slow down in the adoption of the landline. This material relates to my argument that we don’t need to strictly decide how to use a new technology and the society will find its final use.
Funk, J. L. (2004). Mobile disruption: The technologies and applications driving the mobile Internet. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.
According to mobile disruption, Funk introduces not only the applications of mobile phone but also shows how different cultures adapt to this innovative mobile technology. For example, in Japan, people use mobile talking, playing, shopping, and so on; therefore, the development of the mobile phone functions is very flourish. In addition, from this book, the author also indicates the trend of mobile phones in the aspects of network speed, display sizes and improved user interface which directly and indirectly impact the usage of mobile phone. Furthermore, I learned many functions of mobile phone in this book as well, such as navigation services, mobile Internet, e-ticket, and e-wallet services. These are all interesting and promising services and applications for mobile use. Although it is only available in Japan now, I believe it would become popular in other countries in the future. This is a very useful tool book to understand the functions and trends of mobile phone for a layman.
Galambos, L., & Abrahamson, E. J. (2002). Anytime, anywhere: Entrepreneurship and the creation of a wireless world. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
This book is also a good reference for people to comprehend the mobile development. The part of the description of cellular history from technological or biographical viewpoints is excellent. Especially the history of the rise of the cellular network from the invention of cellular idea by AT&T in 1946, the early trials approved by FCC to the final commercial deployment of this system is really an interesting and exciting story to read. I cited this book for giving examples in demonstrating how successful the first-generation (1G) cellular network was. This extreme success of the 1G network in mobile history ignites the subsequent vigorous development of better and faster mobile networks up to date.
Goggin, G. (2006). Cell phone culture: Mobile technology in everyday life. London: Routledge.
This is absolutely the most important book in my survey of mobile development. The book covers many aspects of cell phones. It gives a detailed review of mobile development from the invention of Bell’s telephone to today’s popular cellular networks. It gives a clear and succinct introduction of technological advances in a chronicle style that helps people to grasp the history of mobile development more easily and conveniently. More than technological progress, the author also place rather emphasis in other respects of mobile communications. The author includes lots of stuff to exhibit the technological progress is not the only factor to shape the mobile use. There are other factors such as human culture, economic press, and government intervention intertwined together to impact the treatment, adoption and diffusion of mobile technologies. I cited this book in many places of my papers because the book laid the foundation of my understanding of mobile development.
Hamill, L., & Lasen, A. (2005). Mobile world: Past, present, and future. Computer supported cooperative work. New York, N.Y.: Springer.
Past, present and future of mobile phone functions is the topic of my term project. The book’s purpose partially matches my term project. Therefore the book is also another essential reference for my research. You can find countless materials about mobile phones in this book. The authors try to cover all aspects of mobile world in a comprehensive and detailed way. Particularly, the authors give all-inclusive details of modern mobile development. I like the part of describing the history of modern digital cellular networks and the secret of the success of short messaging service. The short messaging service (SMS) is the most successful data services in mobile use and contributes huge revenue for mobile industry. However, its success was not in the expectation of mobile service providers due to limitation of only 160 characters to compose and poor key-in methods with the keyboards of mobile device. I cited this book to refer to the GSM and SMS histories.
Julian, R. (2007, September). The First Working Transistor – Assembled at Bell Laboratories in 1947. Julian Rubin’s Blog. http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/transistorexperiments.html
The transistorized technology is most essential key to trigger the modern mobile development. Without transistors, you cannot have a mobile phone in your pocket, and you won’t have a good quality of mobile service, not to mention various innovative functions to be implemented in this small gadget. This reference gives readers a history review of the invention of the first working transistor. In 1947, three American physicists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain created the transistor. It also briefly introduces the features of a transistor and how powerful the technology could bring for us. Compared to the vacuum tubes, the essential component in early bulky mobile telephony, the features of small size, low power consumption and high reliability enable the development of portable mobile phones; making the dream of personal communications on the go into fruition.
Laura, R. (1995, March 06). Nasa’s tiny camera has a wide-angle future. Business Week.com. Retrieved February 28, 2009, from http://www.businessweek.com/archives/1995/b341467.arc.htm
Today, your mobile phone is not only used as a communication tool. It is an all-in-one device. Various functions other than talking are added on the phone. The first commercial mobile phone embedded with a camera occurred in 2000 when Sharp, a Japanese leading mobile manufacturer, announced its camera phone. This reference provides a brief history review of so-called on-chip camera. This is the basic technology to enable the emergence of camera phone. With such CCD technology mentioned in this reference, mobile manufacturers have the ability to build such a small camera on the mobile phones. This reference describes what the CCD technology is and the history development of this remarkable technology. After reading this paper, you can have a advanced understanding of today’s camera phone.
Laura, R. (2000, June 08). Ericsson demos first Bluetooth phone. Retrieved February 28, 2009, from http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/06/08/bluetooth.phone.idg/index.html
Bluetooth is an innovative technology, which aims to connect every machine or electronic device to work together. Ericsson T36 cell phone was the first mobile device with a built-in Bluetooth technology. In this reference, Ericsson demonstrated why it included the Bluetooth technology in T36. The concept behind Bluetooth is to forgo the inconvenience of cables by connecting devices such as mobile phones, PCs, printers and handheld computers to each other without wires. The emerging specification, using low-frequency radio waves, promises to connect up to eight devices within a range of roughly ten meters. It provides users with the ability to connect every local device with built-in Bluetooth transceivers and to share data and information with each other. I cited this web page to show the world’s first mobile phone with Bluetooth technology.
Lee, S. (2008, September 08). Evolution of the Mobile Phone Industry and Changes in Competition Structure. Retrieved February 25, 2009, from http://www.asia.udp.cl/informes/doc/09/cell.pdf
Lee’s paper is from Samsung Economic Research Institute and the author provides the data about the statistics of the mobile phone users and shows the trend of the usage of the mobile phone. In this paper, Lee not only indicates the shortcomings of the today’s phones but also predicts the phone model in the future. In this paper, the author also focuses on the market analysis and technological progress. This paper gives me a lot of ideas to think the development in the future and I think the future phone will bring more possibilities for people and make life much easier and more convenient.
Michael (2008, June 19). Mobile Growth is Exceeding Expectations Globally. Retrieved February 27, 2009, from http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/mobile-growth-is-exceeding-expectations-globally-2/
The content of this web page includes statistics in mobile distribution. The data show how remarkable growth in mobile use from 2001 to 2010 and it predicts the mobile penetration will reach 100% before 2013. It also gives statistics about the short messaging service. All these data strongly demonstrate that mobile communications is the most successful technology and business and the mobile phone is the most widespread device on the earth. I cited these statistic data as a evidence to show amazing potential of mobile development.
Mike, A. (2003). Lee De Forest. Retrieved March 08, 2009, from http://www.leedeforest.org/index.html
Lee De Forest, who credited as the father of American radio, unveiled the development of wireless telephony. Although he did not succeed in promoting his wireless telephone business, his idea of transmitting voice through radio and his invention of wireless device established the basis of mobile communications. This reference gives a good introduction of Lee De Forest’s life and you can find valuable data and photos of his invention in those days.
Standage, T. (1998). The Victorian Internet: The remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth centuryʼs on-line pioneers. New York: Walker and.
In this book, by linking the antiquated telegraphic network in reign of Queen Victoria with modern electronic communication network, the author showed his idea: to present the history of an old-fashioned telecommunications network in a way that gives readers perspective on today’s Internet, one of the most influential technologies, that has shaped our modern society. This idea is consistent with the philosophy of my term project that I hope we can find a way to predict the future of mobile phone functionalities through the survey of the past of mobile communications development to the present mobile status. In my first paper, I quoted one powerful sentence in his book to demonstrate that a new innovative technology often encounters various challenges from society, economics and government, before a true success comes to it. It was not born to be successful, even people now take it for granted. Mobile communications also faced similar obstacles and challenges in the past and I believe all these past experiences can be transformed to a positive force if we can learn from them to push the mobile communications moving forward.
Steinbock, D. (2003). Wireless horizon: Strategy and competition in the worldwide mobile marketplace. New York: AMACON.
I cited this book owing to its nice introduction of mobile telephony. The author divided the history of mobile communications into 4 stages: pre-cellular era, the 1G era, the 2G era and the 3G era. In this book, you can find interesting stories and historic events in each stage. All these stories make me re-consider modern mobile phone is not a necessary result. Social culture, economic pressure, government intervention are possible forces to shape the mobile development. The books also gives me the idea of how mobile service providers and manufacturers set up their plans to promote the mobile phones and services to consumers. You can learn how these mobile leading companies view the mobile business and what strategies they adopt to expand their influences in mobile market as well.
Winston, B., & Winston, B. (1998). Media technology and society: A history : from the telegraph to the Internet. London: Routledge.
This book is an absolutely excellent book for readers who have interests in figuring out the social impact of technological change. The authors observed patterns in technological evolution and created a model to fit and to explain how these patterns form. The model describes that a technological development experiences three stages – ideation, supervening social necessities and the law of suppression. The ideation transforms scientific knowledge into physical devices called prototypes to meet certain goals initially. Subsequently, the supervening social necessities determine the survival of these technologies and influence their development. However, the law of suppression, one negative mechanism also from the society, slows down the progress of technology to balance human life. The development of modern cellular communication systems gives us a clear-cut example to show how ideation, supervening social necessities and the law of suppression work interactively and intricately upon this technological progress and diffusion. In this term project, I applied this model to explain the processes of change in the mobile phone functions.
