“Whether we use cell phone technology at work, in public, or for personal reasons it all contributes to how connected we feel to other people and to our daily obligations.” (Hanson) Take a walk down any major city in the world Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Mumbai, Shanghai, or New York City and you will most likely find someone attached to their cell phone or blackberry. The number of cell phone subscribers world wide reached 4.6 billion at the end of 2009 and estimates show a growth rate of one billion cell phone subscribers per year. (Wong) Secretary General Dr. Hamadoun Toure of The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is “confident we will continue to see a rapid uptake in mobile cellular services in 2010, with many more people
Students can use their smartphone and listen to music while riding the bus via an application called Pandora (internet radio); which features thousands of songs from their favorite artists, or maintain personal connections via the social network Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook from his dorm room with roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes while attending Harvard university. (Facebook) Zuckerberg created Facebook to meet the social cultural needs of his college classmates and their demand for a social network to stay connected with one another. The demand for Facebook continued to grow and eventually grew to 470 million users who also felt the urge to stay connected. The Facebook application helps to keep those connection growing every time someone down loads the application to their cell phone. Students are not the only ones who make use of their smartphones to meet their cultural needs. Businessmen and women alike use their Blackberry smartphones to Email, view calendar entries, keep track of business contacts, keep up-to-date memos, and complete financial transactions for work. Blackberry smartphones can also allow business employees to take their instant messaging and social networking out of the office by utilizing BlackBerry Messenger. (BlackBerry®) As noted above its