Footnotes

Today, all human communication is threaded, multi-participatory, multimodal, asynchronous, proximally indistinct, ubiquitous, continuous, and entirely pervasive. Given this enormous change in the ground conditions, it seems perfectly sensible that we should rethink the basic instrument of electronic communication.

As the most concrete and pervasive manifestation of cyberspace, the mobile telephone establishes new cultural patterns of behavior. If, through observation, we can learn the form of these new patterns, we could design a device which plays into and amplifies them. Instead of “the street finds its own use for things,” [2] we could opt for a “comprehensive design science revolution”[3], transforming the mobile telephone into a cultural probe, amplifier, and filter.

The question before us is whether we – as designers, engineers, academics and media theorists – secretly dread the call of the future, or whether we will approach this moment as an opportunity for play. In free play, results are unimportant; the performance is all. Therefore, we need have no goal beyond having a good time. Playing with mobile telephones is like playing with words, because the medium which transmits those words leaves its indelible mark on the message. Since words shape the world[4], transforming the mobile telephone is inherently a revolutionary act.

We therefore propose revolu…

via The Chrome by Helford Jersey: The Telephone Repair Handbook by Mark Pesce.