"Technology Changes, Humans Don't?": A cultural analysis on how young adult women’s ordinary phone call habits led to the refusal of a new smartphone personal security application.

Abstract: Since at least 2011, designers and developers around the world have been creating innovative mobile applications for women’s use to increase their sense of security while alone in public space; however, there is little known about women’s everyday use of personal security applications nor how the personal security application phenomenon is making an impact in society. A small Swedish start-up company designed their own personal security application called SecurityApp and as their intern, I conducted an ethnographic research study focusing on young adult women’s interaction with their new application. My main findings suggested women having little, if any, use for the application in their everyday lives as they went back to utilizing their old smart-phone calling habits. Hence, the question, technology changes, humans don’t? This cultural analysis employed my internship’s field material and a variety of theoretical perspectives and concepts from the fields of Ethnology, Sensual Anthropology, Social Interactionism, and Socio-paleontology to interpret the meanings of women’s everyday phone call security habits. I suggest that women’s phone call habits may be supporting a cultural continuity in how women use technology for safety and security in their everyday lives which may have led to the app being refused. I also provide exploratory insight on the possible norms and taboos surrounding women’s sense of security. I lend insight on the personal security application phenomenon from a (ref)user’s point of view. I demonstrate how women and their phone call habit seemed to fossilize SecurityApp, turning it into a lifeless social fossil, and then implicate that a new social fossil, like a refused mobile application, can be instrumental for both academia and the innovation industry when viewed as innovation waste.