Critical Perspective

Cell Phone as a social shell.

Nowadays technology and cellphones in particular are a big part of our life. We tend to treat them as a way of connection. If we forget cellphone at home or it is broken for a day we feel like we are cut off from the world. In this project I wanted to become a flaneur and look at this issue from a perspective of a disinterested party. 

I walked around town looking at how many people are using their cellphone. And the result was quite shocking. Approximately half of the pedestrians who were passing by were staring at their cellphones. A big number of people were talking on the cellphones. A barely saw any life conversations between people who were walking with somebody else. Most friends or couples walk both staring at their cellphones. 

What is the reason for that? Sherry Turkle discourses in her TED talk video about using social media as a way to avoid physical or voice contact with people. Many people claim that it's much easier to send a text than talk one on one (Turckle, 2010). But why are they used constantly on the streets? In "Urban Future Manifestos" Peter Noever talks about city fears and how spaces around us full of fences and concrete walls - look scary and almost threatening. City landscapes and lack of nature subconsciously makes us feel uncomfortable. Apart from that people are parts of space and being surrounded by a big number of strangers is an unaccustomed and uncomfortable situation for most people. Using cellphone is a perfect way to avoid eye contacts. 

So it's a technological and design paradox: technology that was designed to connect us is actually isolation us.

Noever, P. (2010). Urban Future Manifestos. Los Angeles: Hatje Cantz.

Turkle, S. (2012, April). Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together