Artefact 4: Study of Family Home

I found that my ethnographic study of a family environment showed they relied heavily on mobile communication to enable the family to integrate, it seemed that every member had a relationship with their mobile phone and felt disconnected and lost without one. I feel this wireless communication is penetrating our homes and fragmenting leisure time in familys due to business demands and in a sense nobody is "switching-off" Although mobile communication is vastly increasing efficiency in the working and family environment I think this is adding more "stress" on individuals because of this efficiency.

"An important part of coordination is related to travelling that members of a family habitually do.
These journeys can be made by car, public transportation or even by foot, and include diverse
activities that, for instance, could be to go to the supermarket or to pick up the children from school and drive them to any out-of-school activity. A study159 demonstrated that, in this sense, the mobile telephony is not significantly changing the number of trips a person makes, but allows the redirection of journeys that have already begun.

These kinds of adjustments, which mobile telephony has made habitual, belong to the Microcoordination category:

Micro-coordination is the nuanced management of social interactions. [It] can be seen
in the redirection of trips that have already started, it can be seen in the iterative
agreement as to where and when can meet friends, and it can be seen, for example, in
the ability to call ahead when we are late to an appointment.160
Summing up, what can be said about micro-coordination is that it allows increased levels of
efficiency in everyday activities thanks to perpetual contact"

(Manuel Castells, 2004)