What does answering the phone mean? a sociology of the phone ring and musical ringtones

I provide here an analysis of how users choose and design personalized ringtones as an example of subjects' current concerns with the management of social accessibility. As a result of the growing demands of 'connected presence' mobile phone users are faced with the proliferation of ringing phones in their soundscapes. They therefore exploit the new resources for customizing their ringtones with an orientation towards the management of the interactional problems which the development of 'ubiquitous summoning' may entail. Musical ringtones are chosen or designed by users, so that the shaping of the summons becomes a personal project of the recipients. They are shaped as ambiguous cues inviting two kinds of responsive actions, that is, treating them as a summons (inviting their being answered to) or as a music (inviting their being listened to). Their design becomes the locus of diverging rationales, with some users trying to exacerbate the summoning power of their phone ring and others to maximize their ambiguousness. Moreover musical ringtones are selected so as to constitute a personal gratification that the user addresses to himself (and sometimes also to potential bystanders). They become a 'treat' that users juxtapose and contrast with the obligation to answer that the ringtone incarnates. This provides evidence for a more general 'crisis of the summons' occurring as a collateral effect of increased availability requirements, which reshapes the ways we experience and perform the normative social order which underlies all social encounters.