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Laura Watts (Bsc.) a Future Archaeology of the Mobile Laura Watts (BSc.) A Future Archaeology of the Mobile Telecoms Industry submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy PhD Sociology March 2007 Centre for Science Studies Department of Sociology Lancaster University ii Contents Acknowledgements..................................................iii Declaration............................................................... iv Abstract..................................................................... v Prologue.................................................................... 2 Notes to the reader .............................................. 15 Figuration 1............................................................. 17 Cast of characters................................................ 20 Genealogy Stories............................................... 21 Origin Stories...................................................... 42 Future Stories...................................................... 64 Figuration 2............................................................. 82 Ethnographer....................................................... 85 Future Archaeologist......................................... 104 Figuration 3........................................................... 125 Blue Design Group ........................................... 126 Sand14 .............................................................. 154 Reconstruction 1 ................................................... 181 Reconstruction 2 ................................................... 213 Reconstruction 3 ................................................... 246 Reconstruction 4 ................................................... 264 Reconstruction 5 ................................................... 294 Reconstruction 6 ................................................... 319 Reconstruction 7 ................................................... 347 Epilogue................................................................ 362 Bibliography ......................................................... 375 iii Acknowledgements My considerable thanks to all those at the design studio where I did my ethnographic research for their time, words, and willingness to help, and in particular to ‘Tony’ and ‘Brian’ who made it possible. My thanks also to my former industry colleagues who agreed to be interviewed and talked with such passion; and to Steve Reynolds for access to events at the Mobile Data Association. For access I must also thank Julian Allinson in the University Secretary’s Office for his attention to legal details and negotiations on my behalf. For their unwavering support, advice, and source of calm reflection and suggestion throughout this research process my heartfelt thanks to my supervisors, John Law and Lucy Suchman. The support from everyone at both Department of Sociology and in Centre for Science Studies has been tremendous. Particular thanks to Kevin Hetherington and Yoke-Sum Wong for reading and commenting on early drafts of my work. Thanks to my friends and colleagues who commented with enthusiasm on draft chapters: Ranjini Canchi Raghavendra, Woo-Joo Chang, Jyri Engeström, Adi Kuntsman, Esperanza Miyake, and Sarah Proctor-Thomson. I am also grateful to the numerous commentators during workshops and conferences who had sometimes much, sometimes little, to say concerning performances based on this work. In particular, my thanks to Marilyn Strathern for her support throughout the project. This research would not have been possible without the financial support of Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust, Newby Trust, The Kathleen and Margery Elliot Scholarship Trust, and the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lancaster University. I also wish to express my thanks to Glenn Lyons and John Urry for providing me with time and understanding within the competing demands of a research project. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to the memory of Rosemary Watts, who always believed. iv Declaration I declare that this thesis is my own work, and has not been submitted in any form for the award of a higher degree elsewhere. v Abstract Laura Watts (BSc.) A Future Archaeology of the Mobile Telecoms Industry Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2007 In 2000, five consortia spent twenty billion pounds on UK radio spectrum licences for 3rd Generation mobile telephony or ‘3G’. They were investing in a future, in a specific story of the future, a story of ubiquitous wireless telecommunications. The thesis addresses questions raised in social studies of science and technology as to how such a future is made in everyday practices inside the industry, and how this future might be made otherwise. The research draws on Donna Haraway’s method of ‘interference’ into the making of technoscientific knowledge. Rather than simply critique the future of the mobile telecoms industry, the thesis develops two methods that enact two different interferences into the making of the future in the industry. Both methods begin with a four month ethnography at a design studio of a major mobile phone manufacturer, extended interviews with key informants throughout the industry, and a substantial documentary archive. This forms a necessarily partial and fragmentary set of evidence from which multiple accounts may be reconstructed. The first method is ethnographic, and draws on the evidence to form an account of the industry and its futures situated close to London. The second method is archaeological, and draws on the evidence to form an account of the industry and its futures situated close to the ‘Heart of Neolithic vi Orkney’ World Heritage Site on the archipelago of Orkney, Scotland – a method of Future Archaeology. Through these two methods the thesis explores and demonstrates the effect of location and landscape on the making of the future in the mobile telecoms industry. And it demonstrates the important role of writing-as-method within social studies of science and technology. Keywords: Science and Technology Studies; Mobile Telecommunications; Ethnography; Archaeology; Method. 1 A Future Archaeology of the Mobile Telecoms Industry by Laura Watts 2 Prologue All kinds of seeing with the mind’s eye is allowed me here. I can stand here in the old pasture, where there is nothing but sun and rain, wild oats and thistles and crazy salsify, no cattle grazing, only deer, stand here and shut my eyes and see: the dancing place, the stepped pyramid roofs, a moon of beaten copper on a high pole over the Obsidian. If I listen, can I hear voices with the inner ear? Could you hear voices, Schliemann, in the streets of Troy? If you did, were you crazy too? The Trojans had all been dead three thousand years. Which is farther from us, farther out of reach, more silent – the dead, or the unborn? Those whose bones lie under the thistles and the dirt and the tombstones of the Past, or those who slip weightless among molecules, dwelling where a century passes in a day, among the fair folk, under the great, bell-curved Hill of Possibility? Extract from ‘Towards an Archaeology of the Future’ in ‘Always Coming Home’ by Ursula K. Le Guin Here I stand, beneath a sky filled with clouds of luminous water, in the archaeological remains of a huge circular Neolithic dwelling; a five thousand year old place inscribed in glittering wet stone. Nebulae of fine rain drops hang, swirling, over the surface of a loch beyond; a world of hills and water silver-plated in the damp light. Shimmering in the rain-mist, I see, through my imaginings, a vast semi-circular window of a mobile telecoms design studio, I feel the warmth of a fire burning in the stone hearth. Here, on the far Northern archipelago of Orkney where the Atlantic and North Sea meet, the vast metallic sky presses down intimately upon me, and I hear voices of designers and anthropologists at Sand14, the design company whose dome of possibility I stand within, whose window I stare through. This thesis is the story of that possibility… 3 The story begins with another mobile telecoms design studio, another archaeological site. This is the design studio near London where I worked for a telecoms company: the kitsch black and pink décor, the spot-lit posters advertising fake future devices, the masses of accumulated sketches covering the walls of a project room, the animated videos of future lives. For five years as a designer and business strategist I made mobile telecoms futures in this place, in PowerPoint charts, in video-conferences, in corporate presentations. Became bloodied by being taken aside and told I was too aggressive, too opinionated; I was too young; too inexperienced; if only I wore make-up. The story begins with these memories for they form the beginnings of my ethnographic archive for this research project on the future of the mobile telecoms industry. My concern with the future of the mobile telecoms industry is personal, not because it is a continuation of those industry experiences, but because it evokes those old experiences within a different realm and through a very different practice. I am infused with academic literatures and knowledges that re-make those memories in different ways, and interfere with their futures. Interfere. Interference. My thesis is, at heart, a project of interference. To interfere is to interpose, to meddle, hinder and obstruct (as my Collins English Dictionary tells me); it derives from the old French s’entreferir, to collide. The collision between my memories of how futures were
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