Abstract
This chapter looks at the growing proliferation of digital information, from place-bound desktops to pocket-sized portable digital technology, which has come to facilitate the mobility of modern society. In particular, it explores how budget travellers use a connected, pedestrian, personal and portable mobile sound technology - the iPod, a mobile auditory experience kept close to one's body - in everyday travel life. First, it looks at the mobility of budget travellers and the mobility of objects. Secondly, it conceptually discusses the 'everyday' and, thirdly, it examines how the iPod allows its user to weave in and out of public space and virtual space (or cyberspace). Fourthly, it looks at some of the consequences of travellers weaving in an out of these worlds. This is because, with the iPod, the public/private/virtual worlds intertwine, overlap, interact if not collide head on, causing new relationships, presences, absences, contexts and identities to change, emerge or be constrained (even if only temporarily). By examining how the iPod and mobilities blend together in the travelscape, one can examine the effects on a budget traveller's everyday activities, how they practise mobility, behaviour and management of everyday life and visualize the impact ubiquitous computing may have in the future.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Tourism and mobilities: local-global connections |
| Editors | Peter Burns, M. Novelli |
| Place of Publication | Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK |
| Publisher | Cabi Publishing |
| Pages | 146-186 |
| Number of pages | 41 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781845934040 |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2008 |