[-empyre-] mobile media debate

[Luis Silva <silva.luis@netcabo.pt>]

Hello everyone,

I don't think the important issue here is whether mobile media have  
allowed for the development of multiple identities within the same  
person... that debate goes back to the early chatrooms where people  
could be who they wanted and have different identities at the same  
time. Besides I must have to agree that a stable, clearly defined and  
unified self is part of the modern ideology (as was already stated  
here), and being such, it is culturally defined and context  
dependent. It doesn't seem plausible that mobile media or the like  
have created the urge or need to have fluid identities... but this is  
another reminder that all those big narratives, perfect, all- 
encompassing modernist narratives are failing us and are being  
replaced by subjective, multiple accounts of reality and ourselves.  
It is not us who are different because of technology. Modernism has  
failed us in so many ways and this is just another one...

But despite this issue of unified versus multiple identities, and  
going back a bit to my previous post, we're developing a notion of  
space (and to a large extent due to mobile media) that is less  
defined by geographic features. Telegraphy, satellites and all ways  
of communicating through large distances have shortened space, but  
now it seems that it has become some sort of relational space defined  
by the number of available connections. The more connections  
available to you (through you mobile device for instance) the more  
central you are. The fewer connections (or the total absence of them  
by not having one of those devices) the more peripheric (outside of  
known space, a foreigner, banned, outcast...) one is. And this seems  
to be structurally different from the changes other ways of  
communicating have caused to the notion of space.

anyway, just my opinion

Best,
Luis Silva