Cellular Intimacy

This fun little news story offers some ruminations about how technology, far from alienating us from one another, can in fact encourage mutual affection. Most of the predicted developments strike me as silly. Networked mood rings and glowing pillows? But the article begins with an observation that struck me as original and true: Cellphones have encouraged intimacy by freeing us to converse more privately than we often can on wired phones. As noted by James Stewart, a senior research fellow at The Institute for Studies of Science, Technology and Innovation at the University of Edinburgh, “In the past when handsets were fixed to desks at work or in the hall at home everything said on the phone was semi-public.”