Moving Around Seoul

Abstract

This article is a critical reflection on the author’s perambulatory experiences in Seoul as he follows the curves and strokes of contemporary Seoul’s streets. In theories of mobile communication technologies, there are few discussions about how and why people move and what happens during those movements. As the author manages his presence in the metropolitan environment of Seoul, he focuses on the new connections of social space and mobile communication technologies such as mobile phones, laptops, digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) receivers, and GPS (global positioning system) navigation. By concentrating on corporeal and incorporeal motions via walking, driving, and riding public transportation, the author discusses how the usage of new mobile communication technologies reshapes urban movement and private and public, inside and outside, near and far, and here and there conceptions of social space.

Work or leisure? Designing a user-centered approach for researching activity “in the wild”

“…Studies of mobile technologies have shown that most of the daily work as well as personal life is organized on the move [58] and we are highly conscious of the fact that mobile devices have become constant companions for the majority of the population and that they have developed into individual personalized tools [4]. The mobile device's location is therefore implicitly determined by the location of its owner [32], such that the device supports him/her in more or less all situations, including those at the boundary of work and leisure.…”

“…Studies of mobile technologies have shown that the people increasingly organize their daily life on the move [58] and that both 'work and leisure activities are becoming increasingly mobile' [96]. In many parts of the world, modern mobile devices have developed into individual personalized tools [4], such that mobile device ''context'' is implicitly determined by the dynamically changing location of their owners [32].…”