Research Conducted by B. Agger and Co-Researchers Has Updated Our Knowledge about Social Science.

"The smartphone changes everything, or so it seems. iPhones create iTime and fundamentally alter the boundaries between public and private and day and night. We are now online anytime/anywhere, requiring new theoretical understandings of time and place," scientists in Arlington, United States report.

"This starts with the young, who are inseparable from their phones, and has now spread to their parents. Smartphones use us, bending us to their compulsive rhythms and demanding our attention. In a good society, we would be the masters of technology, retaining the connectivity and global reach of our smartphones, but not enslaved to them as many of us are today," wrote B. Agger and colleagues.

The researchers concluded: "As the example of the smartphone demonstrates, the internet requires new social and cultural theory in order to address its transforming potential."

Agger and colleagues published their study in Time & Society (iTime: Labor and life in a smartphone era. Time & Society, 2011;20(1):119-136).

For more information, contact B. Agger, University of Texas Arlington, Dept. of Sociol & Anthropol, 601 S Nedderman Dr., Room 430, Arlington, TX 76019, United States.

Publisher contact information for the journal Time & Society is: Sage Publications Ltd., 1 Olivers Yard, 55 City Road, London EC1Y 1SP, England.

Keywords: City:Arlington, State:Texas, Country:United States, Region:North and Central America, Social Science, Technology

This article was prepared by Politics & Government Week editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2011, Politics & Government Week via VerticalNews.com.