Jonathan Franzen wrote this essay for the latest issue of Technology Review. I'm not opposed to technological developments. I love my BlackBerry, which lets me deal with lengthy, unwelcome e-mails in a few breathless telegraphic lines for which the recipient is nevertheless obliged to feel grateful, because I did it with my thumbs. Privacy, to me, is not about keeping my personal life hidden from other people. It's about sparing me from the intrusion of other people's personal lives. The technological development that has done lasting harm of real social significance -- the development that, despite the continuing harm it does, you risk ridicule if you publicly complain about today -- is the cell phone. The very essence of the cell phone's hideousness, as a social phenomenon--the bad news that stays bad news--is that it enables and encourages the inflicting of the personal and individual on the public and communal. And there is no higher-caliber utterance than "I love you"--nothing worse that an individual can inflict on a communal public space. Even "Fuck you, dickhead" is less invasive, since it's the kind of thing that angry people do sometimes shout in public, and it can just as easily be directed at a stranger.
From the archive: In an increasingly transitory world, the cellphone is becoming the one fixed piece of our identity.
And from waaay back: Katie Hafner writes about "Net evaders" -- people who steer clear of the Internet and its services despite being in close proximity to connected computers and other avid Internet users. The article is based on survey research by the Pew Trust. As a bit of a "cellular evader" myself, I would submit that this phenomenon is not specific to the Internet.
And just for good measure: To be sure, time marches on. Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.
"I Just Called to Say I Love You": cell phones, sentimentality, and the decline of public space | 
