Los teléfonos móviles cambian muchas cosas. Y entre ellas, nuestros conceptos del espacio y el tiempo. Ya no es preciso quedar a una hora concreta en un lugar determinado. Basta con algunas aproximaciones para que acabemos convergiendo a un lugar. Mizuko Ito lo discute en Mobiles and the appropriation of place:
Mobile phones have revolutionized the experience of arranging meetings in urban space. In the past, landmarks and pre-arranged times were the points that coordinated action and convergence in urban space. People would decide on a particular place and time to meet, and converge at that time and place. I recall hours spent at landmarks such as Hachiko Square in Shibuya or Roppongi crossing, making occasional forays to a payphone to check for messages at home or at a friend’s home. Now teens and twenty-somethings generally do not set a fixed time and place for a meeting. Rather, they initially agree on a general time and place (Shibuya, Saturday late afternoon), and exchange approximately 5 to 15 messages that progressively narrow in on a precise time and place, two or more points eventually converging in a coordinated dance through the urban jungle. As the meeting time nears, contact via messaging and voice becomes more concentrated, eventually culminating in face-to-face contact.
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While all planned encounters have always had some element of prior contact (making a phone call to arrange a meeting, confirming by email, etc.) and post contact (saying thanks the next time you call or meet), the mobile phone makes the situation of «a gathering» extend more obviously beyond the parameters of a face-to-face encounter and interaction. Even as these practices challenge existing norms of propriety and place, they set up new manners and ways of being together. These are the new senses of place being constructed as a hybrid between co-located and remote social contact. Urban space has become highly personalized, no longer a site of anonymity. Young people are in social contact even when alone, coordinating a meeting with a friend, sharing information about a shopping conquest, a celebrity sighting, a photo of their entrée, or just killing time in a texting chat as they ride the train home. Even as the urban environment is being homogenized by the latest franchise influx, mobile phones become devices for customizing and personalizing even the most generic of urban places.
Todo eso fundamentado en observaciones de Japón, donde el uso del móvil está muy extendido. Sería interesante saber cuál es la situación en España, por ejemplo.
(vía Many-to-Many)
