I recently found this entry on Lauren Winner’s blog complaining about the number of people using mobile phones on a college campus. The article, which she refers to as a “screed,” makes some great points, but I still think her starting illustration, the campus and the proliferation of mobile phones, actually goes in the opposite direction she intends (I also can’t help but note the irony that under the picture of the couple on their cells with their backs turned to one another was the following image that linked to an email subscription:
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The problem is, while I’m sure Winner has seen a great deal of ill use of the mobile phone, I simply don’t see campus commons walk-bys as being worth keeping. What if these people were on the phone with their parents, sibling, or children.
As I’ve written before, my wife and I rely on mobile phones. Right now we have four children ranging in ages from 3 to 10 we simply do not get out that often and when we do we are mostly focused on them. (Occasionally, there are moments on trips where Jennifer and I probably get our best conversation time, when the children are in back either asleep or quiet for some other anomalous reason.)
My point is, mobile phone technology is what allows one of us to have the other one “with” us when we are out by ourselves at the store or doing necessary errands. So yeah, you’ll see me at the grocery store with a phone to my ear. But my wife is more important than anyone else and I’m glad to have her voice inside my head and to be able to cast my voice to her over the distance.
So, yes, new communication technologies are disruptive to some “communities” but they can also maintain others. The question isn’t the phone. The question is who is on the other end.
Computer communication is the same way. The challenge is to use the technology to reinforce the right communities.
Maybe what we’re losing is not community, but the ability to be alone. That’s what I always think when I walk across campus and don’t see a single person who’s not gabbing away on their phone. I wonder, can all these people really not stand to be by themselves for the ten minutes it takes to walk across campus? Or am I really the only person left who treasures that time to simply be in my own head and develop my thoughts? Perhaps it’s just an introvert thing and Baylor is full of extroverts…that’s entirely possible, actually.
Yeah, I think that’s Winner’s view–the “invasiveness” of the phone and the need to do something with the time.
It makes sense. I just happen to be in a place where I don’t get enough time with some people and am glad the phone ameliorates the situation.
Heh. My bad for not reading the article before commenting. Sounds like she and I are on the same wave-length. I guess part of it is also that I hate phones in general, and my weekly Sunday call from Mom, and once in a while a specific-need call during the week to Dad is about all I ever use it for. Most of the time when people call me, unless we’re setting up a specific event or something, I let it go to voice mail and then call or e-mail them back later. My total phone usage per week is probably like an hour and a half.
Also, there’s a difference between what you’re saying and most of what she’s saying…she’s partly bemoaning the use of time thing, which is what I was doing, but she’s mostly saying that there needs to be cellphone etiquette, which includes 1) not needlessly talking on your phone when you’re clearly WITH someone live (not campus one-offs, but actually eating or driving or walking or in conversation with someone), and 2) not talking on the phone when in inappropriate places (i.e., the grocery store is fine, but the movie theatre is not–and in two of the last five or six movies I’ve been to, someone has answered their phone in the theatre and carried on a normal-audio-level conversation during the movie). Those are just common courtesy, and it seems the cellphone generation is losing that.
The thing with community is that now we have the opportunity to choose our own communities to a much higher degree than ever before, through cellphones, through the internet, through greater physical mobility. And I think that’s a good thing. Yet there’s also something to be said for learning to live in community with people you didn’t necessarily choose–with people who happen to live in your neighborhood or go to your school or church (which is a mixture of chosen and happenstance community). I’m the first to admit I’m terrible at this, because I’m too shy to go and meet people. I don’t know anyone in my apartment complex. But I feel it’s a loss.