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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Communication studies > Media studies
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Where Are You? - An Ontology of the Cell Phone (Paperback)
Loot Price: R626
Discovery Miles 6 260
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Where Are You? - An Ontology of the Cell Phone (Paperback)
Series: Commonalities
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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This book sheds light on the most philosophically interesting of
contemporary objects: the cell phone. "Where are you?"-a question
asked over cell phones myriad times each day-is arguably the most
philosophical question of our age, given the transformation of
presence the cell phone has wrought in contemporary social life and
public space. Throughout all public spaces, cell phones are now a
ubiquitous prosthesis of what Descartes and Hegel once considered
the absolute tool: the hand. Their power comes in part from their
ability to move about with us-they are like a computer, but we can
carry them with us at all times-in part from what they attach to us
(and how), as all that computational and connective power becomes
both handy and hand-sized. Quite surprisingly, despite their name,
one might argue, as Ferraris does, that cell phones are not really
all that good for sound and speaking. Instead, the main
philosophical point of this book is that mobile phones have come
into their own as writing machines-they function best for text
messages, e-mail, and archives of all kinds. Their philosophical
urgency lies in the manner in which they carry us from the effects
of voice over into reliance upon the written traces that are,
Ferraris argues, the basic stuff of human culture. Ontology is the
study of what there is, and what there is in our age is a huge
network of documents, papers, and texts of all kinds. Social
reality is not constructed by collective intentionality; rather, it
is made up of inscribed acts. As Derrida already prophesized, our
world revolves around writing. Cell phones have attached writing to
our fingers and dragged it into public spaces in a new way. This is
why, with their power to obliterate or morph presence and replace
voice with writing, the cell phone is such a philosophically
interesting object.
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