2. Mobile Communication and the New Insularity

Abstract

New technologies arrive in wrappings of great promise. The new software promises greater processing speed, the latest television a sharper picture, the new car less engine noise, and so on. We are drawn to the pleasures of such promises. However, the cost/benefit analysis from which we proceed at the point of possible ownership is typically limited. How much money will it cost to acquire more processing speed, a sharper image, and so on? Seldom do we ask the broader questions
regarding our lives, our relationships, and our culture. What will be the repercussions of our choices for our quality of life and those around us? Only within recent decades have scholars turned concerted attention to the societal transformations facilitated by the ever-increasing appetite for technological "progress". The critical and cultural analysis of television opened the door to a broad domain of significant scholarship.
More recent analysis has turned to the impact of the internet.
Mobile communication is now on the horizon of critical scrutiny
(see especially, Katz, 2008). In part the relative inattention to date may derive from the fact that mobile phones may seem but a minor technological improvement. As it might appear, they simply sustain the traditional telephonic process, but without the bother of line-locked instruments. Yet, we can scarcely afford a dismissive attitude in this matter. Mobile phones are now used by over a billion people world wide, and the growth curve is steadily increasing1. As the Katz and Aakhus (2002) compendium makes clear, the mobile phone is subtly insinuating itself into the capillaries of every-day interchange, altering our forms of life, and bringing about new possibilities in its wake. In the present offering I wish to focus on the reverberations of mobile communication, and most particularly the mobile phone2. First, I will examine the role of mobile phone usage in bringing about transformations in communal life. Here I will introduce the metaphor of the floating world, which will facilitate an understanding of a new
form of communal life made possible by the mobile phone. As I will propose, the creation of floating worlds generates a new form of insularity. It is not an insularity of individuals, of organizations, or nations, but an informal, micro-social fragmentation. I will then consider some implications of this insularity for the socio-political landscape. As I will propose, cell phone technology may effectively reduce political engagement. However, where political issues are highly
salient, it may serve to both harden political divisions and reduce potentials for dialogue.