Until Sadie Plant's talk at Futuresonic, I'd missed one of the most socially significant aspects of mobile phones: that they have a functional bias against the expansion of social networks, and thus a bias towards intimacy. Phone books exist for landlines, and most email addresses are available publicly somewhere. But there is no public way of getting a cell phone number. Hence cell phones become like comfort blankets to people partly because they represent everyone who you already know reasonably well.

Will Davies May.23.04

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