Re: <nettime> Cellphones and the Cancer of Cellspace

[Michael van Eeden <mieg@waag.org>]

What i find interesting in the whole cellphone debate is that nobody has
mentioned the fact that cellphones are actually a much more 'logical'
solution to the problem phones in general try to solve than old wired
phones. Generally, when you use a phone, you try to reach a person, not a
location. But what we have been doing over the last 100 years is call to a
location. If we were lucky somebody would be at this location, not
necessarily the person we wanted to reach, and this person would either
call the person and hand over the phone to the person we actually wanted
to reach, or take a message. Nowadays in office environments i am always
amazed by people answering other people's phones ('no, he/she is not here
at the moment, sorry')- if somebody is not there isn't the most logical
thing to do just not answer the phone?

Using a phone in a public place can be rude, but i also find it rude if i
have been waiting in the waiting room of my doctor and when i finally get
to see him he answers 4 phone calls (on his wired phone) while i am
sitting there (and other people are waiting). Sometimes i find it rude
when i am sitting in a train and two people are sitting next to me and in
a loud voice they are discussing extremely unimportant things like the
weather. Sometimes i find this amusing, but then again sometimes it can be
amusing to overhear a telephone conversation.

Personally i love having a mobile phone, the whole bizarre setup of
calling a location to reach a person was already bothering me when i was a
kid. If you don't want to have a mobile phone, fine with me. Then again,
when the wired phone was introduced there were people who found it a
disturbing concept and preferred writing letters and having long walks to
meet their relatives.

I like having a choice. I can choose now to either visit people (and maybe
on the way call them to see if they're in), write them, email them, phone
them. I also have a choice not to answer phonecalls, and i often do. My
phone even has a button for it, very nice. I use it in supermarkets,
crowded environments, during conversations. Most people find this strange,
it seems to me most people never even consider _not_ answering their
phones. Actually, most people really appreciate it i turn off my phone
when it rings during a conversation. There are long stretches of time
nobody can reach me because i choose to turn my phone off. I guess these
moments of not being in the network are similar to moments when a 'wired'
person chooses to not being in the same building as their phone. The
difference is that i can choose when i am and when i am not connected. It
is in no way connected to being in a specific location.

Michael van Eeden




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