Caroline Bassett, 'How Many Movements?' Mobile Telephones and Transformations in Urban Space
In “How Many Movements” Caroline Bassett outlines how the development of the mobile phone has altered our sense of space.
Traditional modes of human navigation have been centered around the physical body and its location in its immediate surroundings. Quoting Michel de Certeau she describes how traditional models of transportation, like train travel, offered a certain sense of freedom, in the way it confined the transportee, and allowed him a moment of disassociation from the outside world. The invention of mobile phones has changed all this.
Mobile technology extends our conscience beyond the limitations of our natural sensory apparatus, and allows us to tap into this virtual space at any time and any place.
Jonathan Crary seems to argue that our main challenge when mastering this new media is the ability to be switching focus between our broader surroundings and our media devices. The main issue is the reduction of stimuli from the surroundings.
The act of operating a mobile device becomes an act of prioritization. Crary argues that the mobile device tends to be given primary attention at the expense of the surrounding and more immediate sensory input.
This prioritization is what Basett refers to as attention investment.
Furthermore the article discusses the concept of inventory. Basset sees the mobile phone not just as a simple database of numbers, names or images, but rather as a pool of collected actions (and interactions) and associations.
The phone book of a mobile phone is not just a list of names and numbers but rather a social practice, to which we ascribe emotional significance.
Bassett's overall point seems to be that the mobile phone is not simply an object that enables us to connect, but rather the source of a new sense of subjectivity.
