How cellphones changed our lives.
We're seeing a generational shift in mind-set. Younger people are used to always being in touch with each other, and to being reached themselves.
Phil Kloer investigated in the Atlanta Journal how Cellphones have changed the way we live and raises the question if that's alwasys a good thing.
Kloer states that If Jean-Paul Sartre were writing about life in 2004, he wouldn't say, “Hell is other people”; he'd say, “Hell is other people's cellphones.”
More and more with cellphone users, those plans are what British cultural studies professor Sadie Plant calls “approximeeting,” where a group of friends agree to head to a general location (say, a mall) and then coordinate exactly where to meet by cellphone as everyone starts showing up. It's one of the small ways cellphones have changed the way we behave and interact. “What the cellphone has done is revolutionary, in terms of social relationships,” says Robbie Blinkoff, a cultural anthropologist with a company called ContextResearch, which does field research for businesses (including cellphone companies). And it has changed the way we live, day to day, keeping us in constant connection to everyone who has our number. Angela Mitchell of Austell says she's never free of her cell — she sometimes programs her home number to roll over to her cell — but, she adds, “With anything you do, it can consume and run your life. I won't allow it to run my life.” [Smart Mobs]