Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Telecommunications and the Internet, for example, allow individuals to exist
in more than one place at the same time, acquiring an extensibility that allows
them to live at multiple spatial scales simultaneously (Adams 1995). Similarly,
Virilio (1986) argues that information technologies allow people to be at
many places at once, a transformation he considers to be as radical in the
experience of time and space as that ushered in by early modern capitalism.
“In sum the solid institutional routines that have characterized modern
society for some two hundred years are being shaken by the earthquake of
electronically mediated communication and recomposed into new routines
whose outlines are as yet by no means clear” (Poster 1990:14).
As the spatial scale at which co-presencing operates has increased steadily,
so too have the rhythms and tempos of production and reproduction acceler-
ated. The impacts of cable television, the blogosphere, and the Internet on the
media are important in understanding compressed news cycles that operate
on a 24/7 basis, requiring continual refreshment and leaving little time for
sustained, serious thought: postmodern media, it seems, is ideally adapted to
the super
cial politics of the soundbite. Everyday life for denizens comfort-
able with the postmodern world—and not all of them are—includes multi-
tasking, fast-forwarding, channel-sur
fi
fi
ng in the pursuit of instant intimacy
and instant grati
cation, leading to Type A workaholics who feel guilty about
relaxing, for whom waiting is synonymous with torture, who eat on the run,
measure time in seconds, are addicted to novelty, and su
fi
er from a time-
sickness that leads them to shout at the microwave oven to hurry up (Gleick
1999). Other forces include massive technological change, the blurring of
traditional social roles, and the economic uncertainties brought about by
intense international competition.
One of the more important innovations of post-Fordism is wireless teleph-
ony, including cellular or mobile telephones, which generate contacts among
people rather than among places, of
ff
ering unprecedented degrees of mobility
and deepening the process of the digitization of daily existence. By connect-
ing mobile phones to grids of antennae and towers, typically located near
busy streets, and by using the radio spectrum more e
ff
ciently than do analog
systems, cell phones have made telephony not only mobile, but ubiquitous.
Today, the number of cell phones in the world greatly exceeds landlines,
which have been declining in number. Not surprisingly, given the relatively
low infrastructural costs involved, cell phone adoption has been especially
rapid in developing countries. Even regions long marginalized by the global
telecommunications economy, such as Africa, have witnessed the widespread
use of cellular telephony. The wireless revolution's countless impacts, still
unfolding, are di
cult to predict. For example, whereas conventional trans-
portation policy conceived of transit time as wasted, mobile telephony allows
people to communicate and be transported simultaneously (although the
perils of dialing while driving remain). Cell phones blur the boundaries
between public and private spaces, and allow work and leisure times to inter-
penetrate; for women, this typically means that home invades work, while for
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