The Mobile Telephone as a Return to Unalienated Communication

摘要

Kristof Nyiri intriguingly declares that mobile communication is actually a retrogressive step, returning us to a more immediate, unalienated form of communication that relies heavily on the visual and the oral via MMS messages and voice calls. He argues that the phone re-establishes a sense of personal, micro-social community that is in direct contrast to the more formalised, structured organisation that has been prevalent in modernist thinking. This is a 'new-old age' in which the mobile phone 'promises to re-establish, within the life of post-modern society, some of the features formerly enjoyed by genuine local communities'.