Posted on 12/28/2004 4:17:54 PM PST by Helms
'Hell is other people,”- Sartre
A new generation of sociologists has begun to apply Goffman’s insights to our use of cell phones in public. Kenneth J. Gergen, for example, has argued that one reason cell phones allow a peculiar form of diversion in public spaces is that they encourage “absent presence,” a state where “one is physically present but is absorbed by a technologically mediated world of elsewhere.” You can witness examples of absent presence everywhere: people in line at the bank or a retail store, phones to ear and deep into their own conversations—so unavailable they do not offer the most basic pleasantries to the salesperson or cashier. At my local playground, women deep in cell phone conversations are scattered on benches or distractedly pushing a child on a swing—physically present, to be sure, but “away” in their conversations, not fully engaged with those around them.
The first time you saw a person walking down the street having a conversation using a hands-free cell phone device you intuitively grasped this state. Wildly gesticulating, laughing, mumbling—to the person on the other end of the telephone, their street-walking conversation partner is engaged in normal conversation. To the outside observer, however, he looks like a deranged or slightly addled escapee from a psychiatric ward. Engaged with the ether, hooked up to an earpiece and dangling microphone, his animated voice and gestures are an anomaly in the social space. They violate our everyday sense of normal behavior.
With all these accoutrements, it is not surprising that one contributor to a discussion list about wireless technology recently compared cell phones and BlackBerrys to “electronic pets.” Speaking to a group of business people, he reported, “you constantly see people taking their little pets out and stroking the scroll wheel, coddling them, basically ‘petting’ them.” When confined to a basement conference room, he found that participants “were compelled to ‘walk’ their electronic pets on breaks” to check their messages. In parts of Asia, young women carry their phones in decorated pouches, worn like necklaces, or in pants with specially designed pockets that keep the phone within easy reach. We have become thigmophilic with our technology—touch-loving—a trait we share with rats, as it happens. We are constantly taking them out, fiddling with them, putting them away, taking them out again, reprogramming their directories, text messaging. And cell phone makers are always searching for new ways to exploit our attachments. Nokia offers “expression” phones that allow customization of faceplates and ring tones. Many companies, such as Modtones, sell song samples for cell phone ringers. In Asia, where cell phone use among the young is especially high, companies offer popular anime and manga cartoons as downloadable “wallpaper” for cell phones.
Certain public interactions carry with them certain unspoken rules of behavior. When approaching a grocery store checkout line, you queue behind the last person in line and wait your turn. On the subway, you make way for passengers entering and exiting the cars. Riding on the train, you expect the interruptions of the ticket taker and the periodic crackling blare of station announcements. What you never used to expect, but must now endure, is the auditory abrasion of a stranger arguing about how much he does, indeed, owe to his landlord. I’ve heard business deals, lovers’ quarrels, and the most unsavory gossip. I’ve listened to strangers discuss in excruciating detail their own and others’ embarrassing medical conditions; I’ve heard the details of recent real estate purchases, job triumphs, and awful dates. (The only thing I haven’t heard is phone sex, but perhaps it is only a matter of time.) We are no longer overhearing, which implies accidentally stumbling upon a situation where two people are talking in presumed privacy. Now we are all simply hearing. The result is a world where social space is overtaken by anonymous, unavoidable background noise—a quotidian narration that even in its more interesting moments rarely rises above the tone of a penny dreadful. It seems almost cruel, in this context, that Motorola’s trademarked slogan for its wireless products is “Intelligence Everywhere.”
Why do these cell phone conversations bother us more than listening to two strangers chatter in person about their evening plans or listening to a parent scold a recalcitrant child? Those conversations are quantitatively greater, since we hear both sides of the discussion—so why are they nevertheless experienced as qualitatively different? Perhaps it is because cell phone users harbor illusions about being alone or assume a degree of privacy that the circumstances don’t actually allow. Because cell phone talkers are not interacting with the world around them, they come to believe that the world around them isn’t really there and surely shouldn’t intrude. And when the cell phone user commandeers the space by talking, he or she sends a very clear message to others that they are powerless to insist on their own use of the space. It is a passive-aggressive but extremely effective tactic
Christian Licoppe and Jean-Philippe Heurtin have argued that cell phone use must be understood in a broader context; they note that the central feature of the modern experience is the “deinstitutionalization of personal bonds.” Deinstitutionalization spawns anxiety, and as a result we find ourselves working harder to build trust relationships. Cell phone calls “create a web of short, content-poor interactions through which bonds can be built and strengthened in an ongoing process.”
But as trust is being built and bolstered moment by moment between individuals, public trust among strangers in social settings is eroding. We are strengthening and increasing our interactions with the people we already know at the expense of those who we do not. The result, according to Kenneth Gergen, is “the erosion of face-to-face community, a coherent and centered sense of self, moral bearings, depth of relationship, and the uprooting of meaning from material context: such are the dangers of absent presence.”
No term captures this paradoxical state more ably than the word “roam,” which appears on your phone when you leave an area bristling with wireless towers and go into the wilds of the less well connected. The word appears when your cell phone is looking for a way to connect you, but the real definition of roam is “to go from place to place without purpose or direction,” which has more suggestive implications. It suggests that we have allowed our phones to become the link to our purpose and the symbol of our status—without its signal we lack direction. Roaming was a word whose previous use was largely confined to describing the activities of herds of cattle. In her report on the use of mobile phones throughout the world, Sadie Plant noted, “according to the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the earliest uses of the word ‘mobile’ was in association with the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, the excitable crowd,” whence comes our word “mob.”
Convenience and safety—the two reasons people give for why they have (or “need”) cell phones—are legitimate reasons for using wireless technology; but they are not neutral. Convenience is the major justification for fast food, but its overzealous consumption has something to do with our national obesity “epidemic.” Safety spawned a bewildering range of anti-bacterial products and the overzealous prescription of antibiotics—which in turn led to disease-resistant bacteria.
One possible solution would be to treat cell phone use the way we now treat tobacco use. Public spaces in America were once littered with spittoons and the residue of the chewing tobacco that filled them, despite the disgust the practice fostered. Social norms eventually rendered public spitting déclassé. Similarly, it was not so long ago that cigarette smoking was something people did everywhere—in movie theaters, restaurants, trains, and airplanes. Non-smokers often had a hard time finding refuge from the clouds of nicotine. Today, we ban smoking in all but designated areas. Currently, cell phone users enjoy the same privileges smokers once enjoyed, but there is no reason we cannot reverse the trend. Yale University bans cell phones in some of its libraries, and Amtrak’s introduction of “quiet cars” on some of its routes has been eagerly embraced by commuters. Perhaps one day we will exchange quiet cars for wireless cars, and the majority of public space will revert to the quietly disconnected. In doing so, we might partially reclaim something higher even than healthy lungs: civility.
This reclaiming of social space could have considerable consequences. As sociologist de Gournay has noted, “the telephone is a device ill suited to listening…it is more appropriate for exchanging information.” Considering Americans’ obsession with information—we are, after all, the “information society”—it is useful to draw the distinction. Just as there is a distinction between information and knowledge, there is a vast difference between conversation and talk.
Conversation (as opposed to “talk”) is to genuine sociability what courtship (as opposed to “hooking up”) is to romance. And the technologies that mediate these distinctions are important: the cell phone exchange of information is a distant relative of formal conversation, just as the Internet chat room is a far less compelling place to become intimate with another person than a formal date. In both cases, however, we have convinced ourselves as a culture that these alternatives are just as good as the formalities—that they are, in fact, improvements upon them.
“A conversation has a life of its own and makes demands on its own behalf,” Goffman wrote. “It is a little social system with its own boundary-making tendencies; it is a little patch of commitment and loyalty with its own heroes and its own villains.” According to census data, the percentage of Americans who live alone is the highest it has ever been in our country’s history, making a return to genuine sociability and conversation more important than ever. Cell phones provide us with a new, but not necessarily superior means of communicating with each other. They encourage talk, not conversation. They link us to those we know, but remove us from the strangers who surround us in public space. Our constant accessibility and frequent exchange of information is undeniably useful. But it would be a terrible irony if “being connected” required or encouraged a disconnection from community life—an erosion of the spontaneous encounters and everyday decencies that make society both civilized and tolerable.
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Christine Rosen is a senior editor of The New Atlantis and resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her book Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement was just published by Oxford University Press.
Cell Phone Technology and the Challenge of Absent Presence Kenneth J. Gergen Swarthmore College
"Without my cell phone my emotional life would be in ruins." Sarah, from Willow Grove, PA The erosion of face-to-face community, a coherent and centered sense of self, moral bearings, depth of relationship, and the uprooting of meaning from material context: such are the repercussions of absent presence. Such are the results of the development and proliferation of our major communication technologies of the past century. Yet, curiously enough the telephone was not included in the preceding discussion of absent presence. We must now make amends. It is also when we begin to consider the function of the telephone that we begin to appreciate the profound potentials of the cellular phone. This is not to say that the effects of the cell phone are univocal. Clearly there are differing forms of usage, each of which modifies what I shall here consider its central thrust in cultural life. Consideration of these matters must await discussion of the telephone.
The efficacy of the cell phone in extending the power of endogenous realities is partially reflected in the resentment many feel toward those using them in their presence. It is not simply that one's reverie may be interrupted by a nearby conversation; it is the fact that such conversation actively excludes one from participation. Cell phone conversation typically establishes an "inside space" ("we who are conversing") vs. an "outside space" constituted by those within earshot but prevented from participation. The fact that "it doesn't matter whether you listen or not" underscores the impotent insignificance of the outsider. If one happens to be closely related to the cell phone user (and relatively equal in status), resentment at the other's engagement may become acute. In the manifest structure of privilege, one is defined as secondary, not significant after all. The efficacy of the cell phone in sustaining endogenous ties is further revealed in the complaint voiced by many that "my cell phone is like a prison." Here we find backlash resistance against the continuous intrusion of obligations, standards and expectations of one's circle of intimates. In a world in which one is often and increasingly engaged in multiplicitous relationships, the continuous enforcement of a single perspective may often seem restrictive and oppressive.
Sorry. No cell phone here.
What is better - "absent presence" or "present absence"?
The real art of conversation may be lost.
We also choose to abstain from this type of technology. My husband was nearly killed by a driver on his cell phone.
The only legitimate use I can see is for emergency purposes.
I have no need for anyone to reach me and I abhor telephones.
Yep, people that drive while using their cell phones scare me more than drunk drivers. I'd be interested to know if there are any statistics on this.
I have seen him point to the sign and wait on those in line behind the offender...and not wait on the ignorant phone yacker until they had put their phone away!
When I first saw the sign, I couldn't imagine that there could be people so rude as to expect to be waited-on while also conversing on their cell phone...but in the last year or so I have been in stores, in-line and driving in peril next to these morons. Their lack of any semblance of courtesy is mind-boggling.
My greeting on my cell phone is: "This is Mommy."
Confuses the heck out of wrong numbers.
>>Perhaps it is because cell phone users harbor illusions about being alone or assume a degree of privacy that the circumstances don’t actually allow. Because cell phone talkers are not interacting with the world around them, they come to believe that the world around them isn’t really there and surely shouldn’t intrude. And when the cell phone user commandeers the space by talking, he or she sends a very clear message to others that they are powerless to insist on their own use of the space. It is a passive-aggressive but extremely effective tactic <<
I usually don't go for psycho-babble. . .but this is spot on!
My compassion offered, I wonder what it would be like being killed in an auto accident driven by a Domino's Pizza delivery vehicle. It probably costs $5 to really produce and all for an inauthentic pie to feed a face.
Times they are a changin.
Or how about being on the phone with a loved one driving a large suv and an accident occurs. I don't want that guilt.
There is consideration over allowing these things on airplanes. I have predicted serious physical harm will occur if this comes to pass.
bump
But when your job involves lots of travel, as mine does, and your rarely in your office, the good ol' cell phone is indispensable
I use mine all the time. (Hands free of course)
Wait till "heads up" displays become commonplace that look like glasses or attach to glasses. (Can't wait!! Whoohoo) I already have a "heads up" video "virtual reality" (VR) with a DVD player for aircraft flights.
Add to that, pager, cell phone, laser pen, laptop (with 802-11g), dvd player, DV cam, iPod, smart cards, Suunto wrist computer/watch, Hp calculator, and IPAQ PDA.
I am a walking electronic junkyard! LOL!!
I used to be embarassed to drive down the road and talk on the hands-free unit. I felt people thought I was crazy. So, when I felt like talking to myself, I just put the cell phone to my head and nobody knew the difference.
Here I am, the contrarian, but what do I care what people do when they're in public? The only times it's inappropriate is in movie theaters, quiet restaurants and the like. I rarely see people making nuisances of themselves. I think more and more people are very conscious of what's around them. If they have to talk on the phone, I assume it's important. When I take a cell phone call in public, it's because it's important.
"Yep, people that drive while using their cell phones scare me more than drunk drivers."
I've been driving since 1974 and I have NEVER seen drunks do what cell phoners do! A drunk might weave a bit or make a wide turn (he is most dangerous in terms of reaction time) but people on their cell phones dart from lane to lane as though the road is a giant doodle pad and their car is their pen. I've seen people LITERALLY punctuating their conversations with unconcious lane changes--3 changes in say, 30 seconds.
A drunk is at least TRYING to do it right. Cell phoners aren't EVEN trying--mentally they are not even there!
Cell phone ping.
Conversation (as opposed to “talk”) is to genuine sociability what courtship (as opposed to “hooking up”) is to romance.
--- This is very insightful as a metaphor. I think there is a direct link as well. Being virtually connected at all times through so many mechanisms (im, cell, etc.) gives the illusion that a relationial bond is stronger than it is. The lack of a courtship process is disasterous in my opinion.
No electronic leashes for this old dog .... thank you very much.
Ahh, but the nearest victim is not powerless. Rude people such as these loud cell phone talkers in stores, doctors' offices and restaurant deserve a dose of their rudeness in return, in the form of talking loud next to them, making their conversation impossible, or if alone, coughing loudly.
p.s. not to be attempted if the cell phone user looks capable of kicking your butt.
Not all of us. I use a hands free set. No different than talking to a passenger in the car for me. Actually, talking on the cell while driving keeps me more alert.
Even my PDA is wireless and can be connected to the web. :-)
I love it. I am what you would call a techno freak. The newer, the better!!
Ok, I'm trying to read it again.....nooooo......have to answer my cell phone......
OK let's try it again.........hey wait...I need to call home and let them know I'll be late......because I've got so many calls to make.......
Hey...what was I doing before?
"And when the cell phone user commandeers the space by talking, he or she sends a very clear message to others that they are powerless "
Powerless?
Not really.
There is nothing stopping others from breaking out in a lung busting rendition of "My Way" or Cara Mia" right next to one of these jackasses.
and if they aren't talking on their cell phone they disconnect from their surroundings via head-sets or ear-phones from their Ipods or Walkman.
I don't care if people talk in public on their cell phone. I don't even care if their call is important. I just don't want to be a part of the conversation.
I have a problem with the loud talkers, who assume everyone wants to hear their conversation. If I use mine in public, I make a point to be courteous to the people around me
IT'S JUST NOT NECESSARY TO SHOUT! Drives me crazy! :(
All I have is one high quality digital wireless phone, been that way for 4 years now. I have no land lines, and certainly don't miss being bent by the baby bell in my area. But, that being said, my ringer is off in any public space, I don't need the availability of a cell, just the ability to dial out at will.
ROFL! See post #15.
Just turn the ringer off. The great thing is the ability to dial out when you need to. I don't take any incoming calls on my cell all day. I don't want to be bothered either, nor do I want to annoy others with my ringer.
I was also almost killed
I was turning right onto a highway at a stop light. I saw a car move into the right turn only lane so I pulled out. Unfortunately, the cell phone talking driver did not notice it was a right turn only lane. as best I can tell, she was simply moving into the furthest right lane. I saw her approaching my rear at top speed after she blasted through the intersection, yakking the whole way so I moved into the shoulder. She passed me, completely unaware that I had been ahead of her. After she passed me, she suddenly slammed on the brakes, fishtailing all over the road. I'm guessing she noticed me in her side mirror. Note: She didn't notice me filling her windshield earlier. She then figured out that she avoided an accident that was caused by her own inattention so she hits the gas to remove herself from the place of sin.
Oddly, she performed the same sin at the next exit, moving into the off ramp lane with no intention of turning off the road. This time, she was trapped onto the ramp which resulted in a massive brake dive.
because you know, being on a cell phone in public is much more disconnecting than reading in public. Ditto putting on makeup in the car, or sleeping on the bus/train
I watched a elderly man drive through a red light in his Cadillac this morning like it wasn't even there. He wasn't even into his conversation yet. He was trying to dial the damn phone.
*hiccup*
I have mixed feelings. I have seen WAY too many dangerous drivers who are dangerous because they're yakking on their cel phones. On the other hand, in my work, which revolves entirely around deadlines, I've had my ass pulled out of a sling more than once because of cel phones and the people who carry them and are available pretty much any time because of them.
I've got one (required by my company) but I only use it maybe once a month. I think it has to do with age. I despise the damned things especially the women around here driving a two ton SUV blabbing away.
LOL
At least now, when I am answering the voices in my head, it looks like I'm having a normal conversation.
"My husband is hunting, he just called me from his deer stand to describe the sunset and tell me about the bob cat that ran across the road"
Ah, yes, the old "honey, I'm hunting, here let me play the sound of a bobcat running across the road" trick. LOL!
"The real art of conversation may be lost."
And yet, here we sit, in our collective pajamas, typing away, oblivious to the irony of our collective criticism of the unwashed cell phone user. Oh, wait, gotta log off, my exit is coming up!
Actually, this pissed me off the first time I saw it: it used to be that one could immediately make a snap-judgment about the sanity of someone walking down the street gesturing and talking to themselves - 100% of the time you assumed they were crazy, possibly dangerous and give them an appropriate berth with little thought.
Now you have to do a double take and think about it.
It's annoying.
The hands free devices are certainly much safer. However, you are the exception if you use one every time you get in the car. And for many drivers, it's not going to make much difference. You still have to use the handset to dial, unless you use voice activated dialing for each and every call. Then of course you have text messaging, gaming, and web browsing capabilities which more and more people are using. A lot of people still get distracted toying with the handset while driving, I see it all the time.
LOL After 47 years of marriage I KNOW the man is hunting.
Yes, that I agree. When I talk, I make sure it is as soft as possible, as soft as if I were talking to somebody sitting next to me, what is the difference, really? Yes, loud talkers are totally annoying.
In some Orthodox Jewish communities, public cellphone use by women is considered immodest and frowned upon (if not officially forbidden).
I see the wisdom in this, because I think half the public conversations are gratuitous. Especially when conducted in loud voices -- it's an ego thing, even for a man, a pretentious act and a need for attention.
Got my blue tooth for Christmas and am I ever happy!
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