<nettime> Re: Cellophones and the Cancer of Cellspace

[molly hankwitz <mollybh@pop.netspace.net.au>]

"Locations, Dislocations and the Human Body"
by Molly Hankwitz


Michael van Eeden wrote:

Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 23:06:28 +0100
From: Michael van Eeden <mieg@waag.org>
To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
Subject: Re: <nettime> Cellphones and the Cancer of Cellspace


>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?


This is an excellent point, this point about locations, and is what i was
trying, I guess unsuccessfully to get at when I wrote about driving in 2
cars and getting directions on the road and cellphone use in public space,
safety-wise, in an earlier posting... I mean, cellphones are opening up
many new possibilities and dissolving all kinds of boundaries of public
and private. I think that reducing them to a fashion accessory is to miss
a point that such items are often in a kind of morphing process. I also
think that we can't simply think in terms of one or two kinds of mobility
or of the kind of mobility assumed by the 20 something, 30 something
physically fit age-group of the now-generation. Mobility is really
different if you are poor or handicapped or old or blind. That we can more
readily find each other in space at all is a good thing and if you don't
want to be called or to take messages then you can leave your phone turned
off and collect messages until later.

The expense of cellphones is one of the problems with them, but the
benefits outweigh the money often, especially, if you stop to consider
those in wheelchairs, the blind, or old people alone who are not that
mobile physically. The possibilities opened up for the medically infirm by
virtual space and electronic media is phenomenal, if the expense can be
reduced.

The other problem is cancer. There is a lot of reason to seriously
question this given that computers didn't have adequate safety standards
for radiation for a long, long time. The concrete "trees" built by
cellphone networks for relaying calls may cause cancer after prolonged
exposure to them and there have been efforts to remove these from some
public spaces in Melbourne, for example. (this fact from David Cox) What
effect they have on the breast, if any, is, to my mind, another good
question.  Everywhere there are microwaves and electromagnetic waves. None
of this is really that healthy for us. It's like early radiation standards
on desktop computers. (Australia, I read, leads the world in developing
radiation safety standards for computers.) Still, radiation affects
millions of workers in the global economy daily, not to mention those
affected by "second-hand" radiation or potentially the effect on children
and infants.

Is it a kind of "bloodless" war masquerading as free trade and
competition?

But aside from these possible horrors,what I find really interesting is
the evolution of phones... moving from rotary dial to keypad operated
phones (which allow for more mobility) and I think it's important to note
that the emergence of cellphones is not an isolated phenomenon, but is
accompanied by such developments as the widespread use of voicemail
services in which a phone is needed to collect one's messages from a
remote location. One has a phone number but not an actual phone. The cost
of not dealing with the telephone company but using payphones, or work
phones or other people's phones is preferable for many low-income people.
Likewise, the answering machine which one attachs to one's home phone
allows for a kind of virtuality if one considers that one can receive
messages when not physically at home. The answering machine, replacing
perhaps personal message services with live bodies to take messages for
the better-off, allowed more actual mobility for the phone-owner. Voice
mail then replaced the answering machine as the only remote recorder and
became a service of phone companies as well as private agencies. With all
of these developments the notion of location is already becoming a
displacement.

It think that "mobile phone", the name, gives us many clues about what's
possibly going on. These infiltrating phones are an outward expression of
mobility, perhaps. Maybe they are fashion in this sense, but maybe they
are also an interstitial technology that will morph into something else,
something smaller, more comely, more silent, more invisible, even, and our
ability to be locatable--different from traceable - will be less
prosthetically-obvious -- a phone, a ring, a vibration, a beep - and more
nuanced and controlled.
















mh:>)


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