The Meaning of a Mobile Age: Is It Just Cultural Noise?
Series
Communications in the 21st century
ISBN
3-85165-742-X
Type
book section
Date Issued
2006
Author(s)
Bertschi, Stefan
Editor(s)
Nyíri, Kristóf
Abstract
Foremost, the mobile phone is a technological artefact, a man-made object created for practical purposes. In this paper, however, the mobile phone is understood as a cultural artefact, an object which is far more than a mere technology transforming people's action and society. The paper's title contains the corresponding hypothesis: The meaning of a mobile age amounts, at the least, to what I will later call 'cultural noise'. But how to approach a hypothesis that even transcends itself, as indicated by the word 'just' and the question mark? In the following, an unusual question is answered using unusual frames of reference.