Ubiquity and pervasivity: on the technological mediation of (mobile) everyday life

This paper aims to contribute to the debate about relationships between technology and society, or technology in society, starting from the categories of ubiquity and pervasivity. The analysis will try to understand ubiquitous/pervasive computing as a new frontier in contemporary movements of computerization [cf. Iacono and Kling, 2001], framing it in the interrelationships between different interests expressed in public discourse. Convergence in hi-tech industry and technological artefacts emerging from organizational and socio-cultural arrangements put forward the categories of ubiquity and pervasivity as key-words in design, functionality and perception of technological artefacts. The concept of ubiquity focuses on both the mobility and the pervasivity/embeddedness of technological artefacts that support the emergence of mobile Internetworking in a mobile society. Mobility and a set of affiliated concepts (e.g, miniaturization, portability, integration) constitute the main discursive frame in mobile and ubiquitous computing. Different layers of public discourse emerge as pertinent to this technology: a technology-driven and a social software perspective, both featured in the media discourse. All of them frame, eventually, inclusionary and exclusionary patterns of sociotechnical action, emerging from different politics of signification.