A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cell Phones by Wellner Galit;

Author:Wellner, Galit;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books

Part II

Invariants

Chapter 5

First Invariant

Wall-Window-Screen1

Wall-Window

Rich Ling opens his book New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion with a story of a plumber who enters Ling’s home to fix a leaky faucet. The plumber enters while talking on his cell phone, and while ignoring Ling starts working without saying anything. For Ling, this anecdote represents the cell phone’s ability to separate the plumber’s immediate environment (a home with a leaky faucet) and the space of his personal connections (the plumber’s friend, colleague or wife). The cell phone enables the plumber to make such a separation and to erect an imaginary yet effective “wall” between him and his surroundings. With the cell phone, his attention is split between the here-and-now space of Ling’s home and a not-here space of personal connections. This space of not-here/not-now is accessible because the cell phone acts as a “window.” Although a wall-window may sound at first like an oxymoron, modern architecture supplies us with real examples of wall-windows. Many buildings nowadays feature screen-walls—transparent floor-to-ceiling walls that prevent heat and noise from entering, but let in daylight and views from the outside.2

The wall-window model exposes how the cell phone simultaneously separates the user from the physical surroundings (the wall) and connects him or her to a remote space (via the window) where the interlocutor resides. Using earphones assists in blocking the auditory inputs from the surroundings and contributes to the construction of this wall. Sometimes, the window manifests its visual aspects when we focus on the cell phone’s screen as a visual framing, displaying selected parts of the remote space.3 Unlike computers and televisions, the cell phone can provide the interlocutor (who resides in the other space) with a window to the user’s current physical space through the cell phone’s built-in camera, an activity known as video conferencing. Such activation of the built-in camera turns the cell phone into a two-way window, similar to a window in a building that enables people outside the building to look inside into a specific room.

The wall-window model is not reserved for eccentric situations like the one described by Ling in which the plumber is so busy with his cell phone that he starts working without even saying hello. The model is relevant for most people in everyday situations, such as commuting on a train, where the cell phone keeps us within a virtual (private) territory while helping us avoid feelings of loneliness or boredom. Being “transported” to a remote space is sometimes considered hazardous, as in the case of driving while talking on the cell phone.4

The wall-window model also reveals how the cell phone can be used to undermine power relations, as in the case of students in class or workers at call centers sending text messages. Harvey May and Greg Hearn argue that as students and workers manage to shift their attention to another space, they are no longer fully subjected to their professor or boss.5 The cell phone as wall-window empowers them because it enables

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