5.9. Перепишіть текст за фахом та перекладіть його рідною мовою.

Last month the beleaguered mobile telecoms industry could allow itself a momentary celebration. The number of global phone users had doubled in two years to pass the 1 billion mark, China had just overtaken America as the world's largest market and across Africa subscriptions were doubling.

In Europe the market may have stagnated but across the world the mobile, in the early 1990s little more than a footnote in debates on the wired world, has leapt from obscurity towards ubiquity. The tool, once considered a toy for the elite, has today crossed social and geographical boundaries to find its way into the hands of the young, the old, the rich and the poor, even in communities largely untouched by new technologies. The mobile adds and answers to the more subtle senses of mobility which mark so many contemporary lives.

Connecting people rather than locations, the mobile phone alters people's expectations about what is possible and desirable and changes the parameters of their social lives. It affects their perceptions of themselves, their boundaries and capacities: it is ridiculous to compare a mobile to a prosthetic organ but carried on the person, often all the time, it is something to which people grow attached. It alters the experience of solitude, providing a stream of ways to fill dead time and constant reminders – not always welcome – that one is never quite alone.

Mobiles have changed the parameters of public space, too, blurring the edges of the private world. Visible and audible to all, their usage has rewritten many social rules about where, when and what one should communicate.

It is in developing countries that the mobile phone's impact has been the most immediate. Bangladesh is one of several countries in which mobiles are used as public village telephones, sometimes powered by solar energy, and often offering access to the latest digital services. The mobile has become a political tool, too. Gossip, jokes and trivia first spread text messaging across the Philippines; but during the fall of the government last year, vital news and information moved around the networks.

5.10. Дайте відповіді на запитання.

1. Why could the beleaguered mobile telecoms industry afford a momentary celebration

2. What has a once toy for the elite done today?

3. How does the mobile phone alter people's expectations?

4. In what way have the mobiles influenced public space?

5. How can a mobile become a political tool?