CYBERPSYCHOLOGY, BEHAVIOR, AND SOCIAL NETWORKING Volume 15, Number 12, 2012 ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2012.1563
COLUMNS
CyberSightings
C
yberSightings is a regular feature in CYBER that covers the news relevant to the Cyberpsychology community, including scientific breakthroughs, latest devices, conferences, book reviews, and general announcements of interest to researchers and clinicians. We welcome input for inclusion in this column, and relevant information and suggestions can be sent
[email protected]. In the Spotlight Last week my iPhone was stolen on the train. Unfortunately, this was not the first time someone had stolen my mobile phone, but it had never happened to me with an iPhone. My immediate reaction was of anger and total desperation. I felt like I had lost the most precious thing in my life. I guess that that what made me feel so bad was not merely the economic damage, but primarily the loss of my personal data. All of a sudden I realized that almost every detail of my experience was stored in the 32GB memory of my smartphone. Anybody who could access these data would be able to reconstruct my whole life over the last 2 years or so. The pictures of my newborn daughter and my wife. The videos of my holidays. My work travels. The calendar with all my appointments and events. The songs that I listen to all the time. The people I met, the books I read, the social networks and applications that I used most. My notes about that book I always wanted to write (and I always know I never will). And last but not least, the readings of my blood pressure for the last 6 months (yes, I have also become a fan of self-tracking). My phone was a goldmine of information for anyone who wanted to steal my identity. Luckily, I had set a security password and made a backup copy of all my files on my PC before the incident. However, a four-digit password doesn’t really make you sleep that well when you know that someone has your entire life in his pocket. But the lost of my privacy was not my only concern. I was also worried about how to cope with the work communications blackout. Spending a lot of my time travelling, I use my smartphone not only to make/receive calls, but also to manage e-mails and occasionally to edit documents. It was terrific to discover how vital this tool has become in my work life. Thanks to the increasing number of productivity apps that are available on the market, I have transformed my iPhone into a true ‘‘mobile office’’ that helps me keeping my scheduled tasks daily updated. In fact, for the rest of the day I could not do any of the things that I had planned to do (not to mention the fact that I lost myself twice when trying to reach the meeting location without GPS navigation). On the other side, being forced not to use my smartphone for several hours gave me the opportunity to observe my reactions to this situation. When the ‘‘normal’’ feelings of anger and frustration were over, they were replaced by a more complex emotion, a mix of isolation and bewilderment,
which I would describe as a sensation of ‘‘being disconnected.’’ I felt like being ‘‘cut out’’ from the ‘‘electric flow’’ of events I am usually immersed in. I felt ‘‘naked,’’ vulnerable, precarious, insecure, and it was like I was a complete stranger in a place that I had visited many times before. I was constantly anxious that someone may be trying to contact me for some urgent matter and was not able to reach me. Of course, I knew that I could go to a shop, buy a new sim card for few euros and notify my closer contacts. I knew where I could get a city map and use it to find the meeting’s location. I knew that I could go to an Internet point and answer my e-mails. And I knew that I could even go to the pharmacy store and have my blood pressure measured. But what I was really missing was the possibility of doing all these things using a single tool—my ‘‘magic wand,’’ my trusted personal assistant that knows everything about me. I am probably not the only one to have experienced these iPhone ‘‘withdrawal symptoms.’’ A recent survey with college students carried out by Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann found that 94% of respondents reported to having a certain level of addiction to their iPhones, and 75% slept with their iPhones next to them in bed (www.salon.com/2010/05/30/iphone_college_students/). Fortunately, this ‘‘feeling of disconnection’’ gradually disappeared some hours after the incident. And surprisingly, I started to feel increasingly comfortable with this new situation. The first thing I noticed is that my perception of time was changing—it was like time expanded and everything moved in slow motion. I had long hours in front of me to spend with myself, completely isolated from any form of mediated communication. At the same time, it felt very peaceful without all incoming calls, e-mails, sms, and tweets, and I wanted this feeling to last for the rest of the day. And at the end, it was beautiful to get lost in the city and observe the world around me with fresh eyes, instead of looking at a blue dot moving across Google map. Upcoming Meetings
698
Seventh International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction Barcelona, Spain February 10–13, 2013 www.tei-conf.org/13/ iConference 2013 Fort Worth, Texas February 12–15, 2013 www.ischools.org/iConference13/2013index/ 15th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work San Antonio, Texas February 16–20, 2013 www.cscw2012.org/
CYBERSIGHTINGS
699
NextMed—Medicine Meets Virtual Reality 20 San Diego, California February 20–23, 2013 www.nextmed.com/
Augmented Human 2013 Stuttgart, Germany March 7–8, 2013 http://hcilab.org/ah2013/
8th ACM/IEE International Conference in Human–Robot Interaction 2013 Tokyo, Japan March 3–6, 2013 http://humanrobotinteraction.org/2013/
Online Conference on Multidisciplinary Social Sciences Online conference March 29–31, 2013 www.auaicei.com/ Compiled by Andrea Gaggioli, Ph.D. Catholic University of Milan Milan, Italy
