What is a mobile phone?

What is a mobile phone for? The question used to be an easy one­ a mobile phone is a phone that you can carry around to make and receive calls. These days the question is a bit trickier. Mobile phones (like computers) have converged with communications and it is difficult to see where the join is. Mobile phones are mail boxes, cameras, video cameras, entertainment centres, newspapers, music centres, TV sets, messaging systems, scrap-books and devices you can make and receive calls from. A book called Thumb Culture : The Meaning of Mobile Phones for Society asks this question to a cornucopia of 25 technology experts and academics and comes up with some interesting answers. Two of the more interesting ideas are whether mobiles are anti-revolutionary and whether bloging (mobile blogs or moblogs in particular) are journalism or just exhibitionism.