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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 May 2016
The spread of mobile telephones in Italy is examined as a typical technological phenomenon and is contextualized in the theoretical literature on technological change. A brief introduction is followed by a historical account of the growth of mobile telephony and then by an examination of its current spread and likely future development. After this, two interpretative models are put forward which, it is suggested, may be used both in this particular case and for any form of technologically mediated communication (TMC): the butterfly paradigm (applied to the spread of a technology), and the circuit synergy paradigm (applied to the relative importance of individual factors in the process of diffusion).
Il contributo analizza la diffusione della telefonia mobile in Italia come caso tipico di una diffusione di tecnologia, confrontandosi con il dibattito teorico sull'argomento. In una prima parte vengono forniti i dati sulla diffusione nel quadro di una ampia contestualizzazione storica, sia economico-industrial e che politico-culturale. In una seconda parte vengono presentati due modelli descrittivi, di cui si propone l'applicazione a ogni forma di comunicazione tecnologicamente mediata: il modello della farfalla e il modello della sinergia dei circuiti. Il primo si applica alle tappe della diffusione tecnologica, il secondo al peso delle singole componenti di tale diffusione.
∗Translated by John Dickie.
1. See, for example, du Gay, Paul et al., Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, Sage, London, 1997. For a more empirical approach to the same issues see Bull, Michael, Sounding Out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life, Berg, Oxford, 2000.Google Scholar
2. See Colombo, Fausto, Il piccolo libro del telefono. Una vita al cellulare, Bompiani, Milan, 2001. The research projects in question are being carried out under my supervision, with the involvement of Barbara Scifo, at the Osservatorio sulla Comunicazione, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan.Google Scholar
3. Source: Authority delle Telecomunicazioni, 14 July 2000.Google Scholar
4. Source: <http://www.gsmbox.it>, 8 March 2000.,+8+March+2000.>Google Scholar
5. Source: Mobile Communication Table, taken from ANSA, 16 November 1999.Google Scholar
6. It should be said that there has not been a huge amount of work done on the history of cellular phones in Italy. Worth noting are: Abeille, Renato, Storia delle telecomunicazion i italiane e della SIP (1964–1994), Angeli, Franco, Milan, 1999; Borrelli, Davide, Il telefono, Ellissi, Naples, 2000 and Il filo dei discorsi. Teoria e storia sociale del telefono, Sossella, Rome, 2000, which contains a historical survey of the spread of the telephone in the Naples area at the start of the twentieth century.Google Scholar
7. Source: Siemens research, 14 June 2000.Google Scholar
8. On the growth of new standards like Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), above all in the United States, Korea and Japan, see for example, Chiaberge, Riccardo, L'algoritmo di Viterbi, Longanesi, Milan, 2000.Google Scholar
9. Source: Goldmann-Sachs, 31 August 2000.Google Scholar
10. See Federcomin report on ‘E-family e utilizzo domestico delle tecnologie’, August 2000.Google Scholar
11. Source: <http://gsmbox.it>, 18 May 2000.,+18+May+2000.>Google Scholar
12. For the debate on interpretative models of technological innovation, see Flichy, Patrice, L'Innovation technique, récents développements en sciences sociales. Vers une nouvelle théorie de l'innovation, La Découverte, Paris, 1995.Google Scholar
13. Griswold, Wendy, Cultures and Society in a Changing World, Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, 1994. I have introduced the following terminological and conceptual modifications to Griswold's scheme: (1) Where Griswold uses ‘social world’ to mean ‘the economic, political, social and cultural models and needs that characterize a particular moment in time’, I use ‘socio-cultural environment’ to designate only the narrow cultural system within which the even narrower domain of industrialized culture functions. What I have in mind here are institutional cultures (e.g. academic), ‘localized’ identity cultures (e.g. ethnicity), but also lifestyles involving cultural attitudes (e.g. fashion, or the ‘cultural share’ of purchases deemed to be rational actions). Industrial culture ceaselessly draws on and contributes to this environment. (2) I have replaced Griswold's notion of a ‘creator’ with that of the ‘world of production’ which highlights two things: the way collective, technologized work replaces individual, artisanal work; and the way that, in the production of the kind of cultural goods associated with industry, there is a strong tendency to mix properly creative types of work with organizational or other types that are not especially, or not at all, creative. (3) I replace the term ‘cultural object’ with ‘cultural product’ to underline its nature as a commodity, subject to market forces but at the same time possessing characteristics that derive from the way it is produced. It is well known, for example, that the duration of an opera is far more strictly determined, and determined in a different way, than (to take another cultural object belonging to a clearly identifiable genre) that of a chivalric epic poem. (4) Finally, I have merged Griswold's figure of the ‘receiver’ into the wider world of ‘consumption’. I have done this in order to stress both that the receiver's role strongly mixes an economic act (purchase or some other form of acquisition on the market) with the act of pure reception, and that it irreversibly mixes use as assimilation (what I use stays with me, becomes part of my cultural property) with use as destruction (what I consume disappears and can no longer be used).Google Scholar
14. The following example is taken from the history of the introduction of photography in Italy in the nineteenth century. Photography is used initially by painters as a tool for their own traditional work and is requested by the public as a cheap replacement for the haut bourgeois portrait: (1) Subsequently painters begin to discover the new options that photography offers; gradually, in parallel with artistic naturalism, they absorb the photographic gaze into painting. (2) The photographic gaze spreads through illustrated magazines, although photographs often continue to be used just as models for drawings. (3) Print technologies gradually make it easier to replace illustrations with photographs. (4) The spread of photography itself makes it an ordinary object which steadily comes to be accepted in the collective imaginary and in day-to-day use. (5) Modern consumption of photography is born.Google Scholar
15. Some of these comments are reproduced in my Il Piccolo libro del telefono.Google Scholar
16. On this theme, see the debate reviewed by Flichy in the first chapter of L'Innovation technique.Google Scholar
17. See, for example, Utterback, J.M., ‘Innovation in industry and the diffusion of technology’, Science, 15 February 1974.Google Scholar
