Mobile communication proves that quality is better than quantity

In both cases, in a perception no doubt familiar to all mobile phone users, the speaker views herself as being able to control the potential interaction – its mode (voice call versus text message), even its occurrence (to answer or not to answer). But is this a question of communication at all? Is it a question of communication when one is not so much relating to another, as evading another? Moreover, is it a question of communication when the terms of the interaction are being solely determined by one party? For if communication presupposes a dialogue (in effect, if not actuality), which I think, in turn, can mean nothing other than a presumption of parity, how do we classify such a one-sided affair? And if at least some of our exchanges using a mobile phone are about evasion and non-parity, can they be as nutritive of personal relations as we’d like to believe? To put it another way, can such exchanges be counted in our tally of communication? If we subtract them, as it seems we must, our idea of quantity starts to look a little more modest.

Time in lieu

The same article gives various examples of how people exploit the notion of “soft time”. It cites job candidates ringing ahead at interview time to say they will be late, and once-punctual parents ringing day-care centres at supposed pick-up times to advise they are on their way. As the article sums it up, “8:30 is still 8:00 as long as your voice arrives on time”.

And here is the second problem with the idea of quantity. As with the issue of control, a phone call is not necessarily communication, and in this case, it’s quite a different beast altogether. It’s no exaggeration to say that, in this case, the phone call or message is doing duty for the person’s very being. That is, the phone call or message is sent out as a kind of proxy or advance party in lieu of the “real” person. And like calls and messages predicated on evasion and non-parity, it would seem very difficult to classify this as communication. Indeed, unlike the former which, after all, still concerns relation – albeit negatively – this second type of case doesn’t seem to concern relation at all, unless it’s the relation of the real “self” to the proxy “self”.

You might object that this situation – the substitution of the phone call for the person’s presence – is an extreme or unusual case. Yet, to a greater or lesser extent, all personal interactions involve a representation or proxy of the self; this example simply makes it clearer than usual. And if this extreme case is not classifiable as communication, it suggests there are other, less extreme examples of phone calls and messages where communication and relation are also in abeyance. In summary, if we subtract these “non-relational” phone calls and messages from our tally of personal communication, our conceit of quantity becomes more modest still.

And once we’ve deflated the ludicrous claims of quantity in personal communications to more realistic proportions, what are we left with? Probably something not too dissimilar to the case of Oran: a populace using whatever means available to communicate, but doomed, like all human beings, to scrabbling for tokens of communion in words and signs that no matter their number, are always too few, too late.