The book description in the fall 2013 MIT Press catalogue begins: "A decade ago. the customizable ringtone was ubiquitous...Ringtones quickly became a multi-billion-dollar global industry, and almost as quickly, faded away."
A multi-billion-dollar industry? What else did I miss by being kind of a late cell phone adopter (okay, very late)?
Apparently, enough for a whole book. "Gopinath describes the technical and economic structure of the ringtone industry, considering the transformation of ringtones from monophonic, single-line synthesizer files to ...etc. But that's just the start. He discusses sociological practices that seemed to wane as a result of these shifts...Gopinath examines 'declines,' 'reversals' and 'revivals' of cultural forms associated with the ringtone and its changes, including the Crazy Frog fad, the use of ringtones in political movements (as in the Phillipine 'Gloriagate' scandal..." Also "the ringtone's relation to pop music (including possible race and class aspects of ringtone consumption). Finally, Gopinath considers the attempt to rebrand ringtones as 'mobile music' and the emergence of cloud computing."
The Crazy Frog fad? Gloriagate?
So there are two prominent possibilities here: (1) This is a work of subtle satire that will have geeky snorting laughter echoing through Silicon Valley (if they still call it that), or (2) All this happened during my long diplomatic mission to planet Vulcan.
On the bright side, the whole thing has "faded away." So did I miss anything?
No comments:
Post a Comment