Week 3 Readings - Mobility / Speed
Kellerman discusses the progressive trend of mobility and opens his article by reinforcing several observations explored in Manovich. Kellerman states, ?three dimensions (development, structure and operation) are connected in that the developments of the systems have shaped up their structures? (74). Kellerman essentially repeats Manovich?s mantra here?the formation of a technology affects it structure and its structure affects it use, and as Manovich believes, its use also eventually affects its user. However, Kellerman?s later incorporation of Prato and Trivero (1985) in order to draw a parallel between body containers (trains) and body expanders (motorcycles) on the one hand, and mobile technologies and older media on the other hand, was an failed attempt to valorize mobility and struck me as a poor comparison. Mobile technologies, Kellerman asserts, allow for body expansion and expression, and the old technologies (like TV) simply move information to make it more accessible; however, I felt that Kellerman?s comparison hoped to emphasize the expansive/expanding feeling of a motorcycle so that it could valorize body expanders and then extend that valorization onto mobile technologies. In my view, Kellerman, as an observer of media, should have recognized that both ?body expanding? and ?body containing? encourage emotional senses and produce particular responses, without the glorification of one type of response.
Interestingly, Jensen, like Kellerman, also makes connections between developments and structures, but his observations are centered on social environments. Jensen re-examines Simmel and Goffman (two sociologists) in order to call attention to how everyday micro-level social interactions not only reflect larger social structures but help to constitute such structures and sustain them in the current age of advanced mobility. Jensen explores how Simmel and Goffman examine ?the interaction and meeting of the eyes, the construction of trust and the importance of mobility practices? (159) in order to understand how individuals uphold larger social structures. In fact, Jensen asserts that large structures cannot be examined exclusively if one wants to understand the workings of a whole system. However, I was not entirely convinced that an examination of micro-level interactions will continue to be very useful toward understanding a whole system because such interactions may not continue to uphold larger social structures. In other words, if we take Wood and Graham?s recognition that new technologies necessitate increased regulation and control seriously, then we must assert that the individual eventually will not uphold social codes or social systems by choice, but by force. So, in my view, the Simmel and Goffman approach might be most useful, in the future, not for studying how individuals uphold their environments, but for studying how individuals try to re-establish the power to uphold their environments.
In a similar discussion of connections between individuals and structures, Shelly and Urry elucidate ways in which mobile technologies affect and organize our lives and produce particular responses. Their discussion of ?a new mobilities paradigm? focuses attention on the complex dynamic between mobility and power. They claim that ??mobility and control over mobility both reflect and reinforce power?? (211). Yet, I believe Shelley and Urry miss some important observations about the consequences of mobility; however, some of these observations are made by Wood and Graham, as I will explain.
In one instance, Shelly and Urry mention how ?the acceptance of ?circulation rhetoric? often entails ?the endorsement of multicultural enrichment?? (210). And, in a subsequent instance, they point out that ?the increase in cross-border transactions?go hand in hand with ?pronounced territorial concentrations of resources necessary for the management and servicing of that dispersal and mobility?? (210). The reader should, presumably, then conclude that embracing mobility requires 1) an increase in social diversity and 2) an increase in the protection of resources. Yet, on both of these points, Shelley and Urry avoided a discussion of consequences. On point 1: they fail to recognize how cultural identities are intimately connected to place, so embracing mobility could result in cultural deconstruction as place loses significance. Here I am thinking of a study on the connection between local life and Belarusian Nationalism conducted by Alexander Pershai. (See Nationalities Papers, Volume 36, Issue 1 March 2008 , pages 85 - 103.) Wood and Graham, however, at least recognize the consequences of rejecting technologies. They suggest that cultures that do not access new technologies will not create for themselves a ?control society? (Deleuze) and will be cultures who are actually most free, but they will also be the least legitimate in the world.
On point 2: Shelley and Urry failed to state the consequences of consolidating resources, which would likely be a rise in adversarial relations and war. Wood and Graham, however, give much attention to conflicts that arise as a result of mobility. One of their most important contributions, in my view, was their discussion of ?convergence,? which ?'measures the extent to which the process of translation and its circulation of intermediaries leads to agreement'? (180). I think this observation is an important one because I want to suggest that the idea of convergence is now imposed as an individual?s responsibility?as mobility becomes more intertwined with the economy and with normal human functioning, then any individual that does not ?converge? may be problematized and placed in conflict with the regulating body. So good behavior equals convergence. In short, even though Shelley and Urry point out how mobility encourages consolidation of resources, they do not play out their observations in the futurist sense that Wood and Graham do, to consider how mobility also constrains.
Most interesting to me was Wood?s and Graham?s suggestion that surveillance will be made automated and that an automated surveillance system will ??transform the spatial threshold of the institution into a threshold of legitimacy'? (181). I tentatively agree that people will probably no longer be able to determine appropriate use of a technology; the institution?s interpretation will be the most valid one. Here, I think it is worth remembering Baudrillard?s warning to us about the univocal message sent through the media?s code. Just as Baudrillard previously warned us about the univocal message, so should we now be on alert for the presence of a univocal standard of operation regulated through surveillance technology. And I think it is easy to see that the univocal standard of operation for any technology is connected to the univocal message; as Wood and Graham later state, ?through the use of automated systems of surveillance and control, the world-views, social judgments, and ordering processes that are inseparable from processes of inventing and enforcing boundaries, can be hidden.? In this conception, the univocal message is quiet, hidden, but powerfully acted out in the world through set standard operations and legitimized means.