Re: <nettime> Re: Cellpohones and the cancer of cellspace

[Roberto Verzola <rverzola@phil.gn.apc.org>]

 >Cellphones are not necessarily "the telephone" either: The cellphone
 >(known as the "handy" in Central Europe) is actually more like radio - in
 >the original sense of wireless communication - than telephone. Its direct
 >ancestry is therefore closer to CB than to Ma Bell. In this sense radio
 >returns - via the handy - to its un-programmed origins as a medium of
 >one-to-one communication after 75 years of domination by the
 >"broadcasting" industry.

On the contrary, the cellphone, like the telephone and unlike radio,
requires an infrastructure of cell sites (akin to the telephone's
infrastructure of exchanges). Both the cellphone and the telephone
infrastructure are increasingly privatized. With radio, given your
hand-held or base station, you use no other infrastructure (unless you
rely on repeaters) except the ether which is a public resource. Access to
the ether should therefore be a matter of right, but access to cellphone
and telephone services are constrained by private property considerations.


Roberto Verzola




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