He laid out a foundation of information of mobile technolgy history that brought me back to my first cell phone my current iPhone and all of my mobile devices that I had in between.
Hansen is correct--mobile technology is here--and it is becoming more and more present as time passes. Just last year, I got my first iPhone, after using an iPad and watching conference attendees at AASL communicate and learn over their mobile devices. I convinced my husband to take the plunge--and it felt like a HUGE financial jump for us....And now, neither of us can imagine life without our devices.
Last year, I attended a conference on digital technology and equity. The keynote speaker was S. Craig Watson author of The Young and the Digital. Watson discussed (as Hansen does in his articles) the research he and his colleagues at the MacArthur Foundation had done about teens and technology. They found that the digital divide did not exist in the same ways of the past--as most teens that in the past would not have had internet access now did have that access in a mobile device. Hansen points out in his article that this is the case for adults as well.
This has big implications for libraries--if many people are only accessing our information online from a mobile device--our information better be usable from said devices. I especially was enamored with the ideas of librarians trying to use the libraries tools only from said mobile devices and experiences things as many patrons do. Internet technology is changing, and libraries need to make their tools user friendly.
As an elementary school librarian, most of my students don't have mobile devices, but many do use their parents. The articles were a good reminder to me to make sure that the things I publish on the web are mobile device readable--especially for my library the videos we publish, as most parents use their phones to get news from the web.
* Photo taken from Creative Coomons: jagelado
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