On social determinism and the media

Reading Time: 2 minutesMy week started at 10 this morning and was over by 1300 this afternoon. It was a lecture and a seminar about Brian Winston and social determinism in relation to the media. It’s a theory which is exploring whether social factors affect the technology that we use. I was taking notes during that lecture but not with pen and paper and without a laptop. Instead I was using the O2 XDA minis. It’s a really nice device and I’ve had it for over two months now.

What I love about it is it’s size, being about the size of my palm it’s large for a fun but tiny for a laptop. It’s got a big display and a sign out keyboard. It’s also got a good scribling interface which makes handwriting notes just as easy as typing. It’s a friend that played with this feature and I’m quite impressed.

The reason I love it is that it’s got all the features you’d expect from the i-phone but in the windows operating system and for a European market. The fact it’s got a keyboard makes it ideal for fast typing of sms. I often find myself writing over 200 characters because it’s so simple.

Checking e-mail is a doddle. Simply download the gmail interface and connect to the web. The download of messages is easy and intuitive. It’s a shame that data transfer over gprs is still expensive otherwise it’d be perfect.

I’ve made a skype call with it and it’s worked well. I was able to make a phone call to a mobile phone and talk and hear myself at the same time. Being alone that’s complicated but I know it works.

I bought a program and that makes the synchronisation extremely straight forward. I have contacts, pictures and some word documents synced on the ibook and the mobile phone this way.

It’s perfect for students and I really enjoy using the device.

I’m speaking as someone who’s owned at least 5-10 mobile phones over the past few years.