Communication Technology-mediated/ing Urban Anxieties: The Case of Public Payphone in Taiwan
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Hong, Dong-Li
Abstract
In this research, I discusses two kinds of urban anxieties—anxieties of contact and no contact—which is based on the relationships between self and others in the urban society. A dual structure of anxiety which linked the urban anxieties of others to an idea of humans as cyborg subject relying on urban infrastructures was proposed. My argument is that the urban anxieties mediated by public facilities reveals the dynamics of self-other relations.
Secondary data was collected and rearrange as the narratives of payphone anxieties for analyzing the content of anxieties, image of others in the anxiety narratives, and easement as well as ordering of the anxieties. By studying and examining the case of public payphone in Taiwan, I discuss the anxieties of cyborg subjects, with endogenous dialectics of mobility-fixity and contact-no contact, that assembled by different technologies of public payphone and social-technical context.
First, the anxiety of contact mediated by public payphone refers to the individualistic sense of body, which reject contacts of problematic body of other, formed under modern hygiene knowledge and practices. While payphone forms as the mechanical body of cyborg subject in the city, as public facility, it also become the fields of direct or indirect contact of others’ body. In other words, there is endogenous tension of contacting others’ body within the body of cyborg subject. The analytical result shows three kinds of technology-mediated bordering practices between self and others—fetishism of mediates, objectification of other, and otherization of object—corresponding with different images of other.
Second, the payphone-mediated anxiety of no contact refers to the maintaining and control of communication linkages. To ease anxiety of no contact, the communication linkage need to be both available and under control. Facing to the anxieties, technologies and ethic of using to maintain the linkages are adopted by cyborg subjects. The technics and practices of controlling and filtering the communication linkages are also needed.
In the conclusion, I further discuss the transformation of the two anxieties as well as the self-other relations in the mobile phone era. Although the public payphone-mediated anxieties of contact and no contact are relieved by self-owned and seamless mobile phone, the origin of the anxieties, the tension between self and other, are not really negotiated. Furthermore, the original issues and anxieties in public realm are hidden behind the self-governance of cyborg subject and their self-own devices, in other word, a cyborg subject with exclusive mechanical body and vision without others.
Subjects
接觸焦慮
分離焦慮
公用電話
社會-技術裝配
他者
SDGs
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-103-R00544011-1.pdf
Size
23.54 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):02be2c3ae97ea518b2faf3127d3dd7b4