Smart Phone Use: The Role of Paradox in the Production of Everyday Life

• In Event: Understanding Digital Culture: Useful Tools and Inevitable Elisions

Abstract

This paper departs from the thesis that smart phones can be considered as cognitive devices as well as social devices for social re-engineering. Psychological as well as sociological researches about smart phones usage and cognitive processes point out the centrality of subjective space/time experience in the reorganization of social life and psychological processes in contemporary everyday life. In the context of smart phone
usage, I propose the hypothesis that through the ability of these systems to regenerate
paradoxical relationships the social fabric is transformed. With the term paradoxical
relations, I mean the phenomenon of producing an effect and its opposite. Specific
instances of paradoxical relations are discussed demonstrating the ways in which habits
reproduce and at the same time challenge common social practices and discourses.
Accounts of the psychological processes that accompany this phenomenon are important
clues to understand our contemporary technological age.

Key Words: Smart phones; socio-technical dynamics; paradoxical relations

Author

• Heidi Figueroa Sarriera, University of Puerto Rico- Río Piedras Campus