This week we've picked up more early mobile and public-internet use articles. The researchers here are doing us a favor: instead of waiting for Carolyn Marvin to come along a couple hundred years later and explore the new technologies retrospectively, we've got people doing it concurrently now. Already, much of this work shows its age. Our researchers talk about the Usenet, internet cafes, and unfamiliarity with mobile phones. Certainly these issues/objects still exist...but lots has changed.
In the context of third places, I have several thoughts. First, I think much of the concern explored by Ling about mobile phones is moot these days. Some of this is because of technological advances--vibrate, ear pieces--and some of it is through acclimation. There are still awkward moments--but they really are fewer and farther between these days, even though mobile phones are increasingly ubiquitous. People know when to switch the phone to vibrate, reject a call, or step outside. Those of us not receiving calls have gotten used to biding our time. As for internet use in cafes: the Hampton piece gave a much finer overview of the phenomenon than Lee's--benefiting from the later date & a brawnier methodology. (The two don't quite share the same target--coffee cafes vs. internet cafe--but given the passage of time they are close.) I feel like these two articles gave us a solid perspective of how people interact with each other while using the internet in public; I also feel like they are just touching on what will happen as internet use goes into our pockets and hands across cities...
The Whyte video we saw suggested that most people in public spaces aren't talking to new people--they're just enjoying copresence. It seems to me that the rise of TV probably was the real killer for public space--suddenly, there was a very attractive alternative to people watching and it the two were actually mutually-exclusive. Mobile technology, on the other hand, seems like a boon to utilizations of public space. Instead of being tethered to my home phone, I'll chat in the park with far-flung relatives. Instead of sitting watching the TV in my bedroom, I'll surf the net in Rittenhouse. If the desired outcome of being in public spaces is collective action (which is very far from what Whyte observed), it is certainly conceivable that adding layers of communication media will encourage conversations that lead to action. To some extent, people may be cocooned in their own, mobile bubbles--but these bubbles will at least bump into each other instead of being neatly tucked away inside the oikos.
Which brings me back to third spaces. One of the sidebars from the textbook blurb on third-spaces talked about the growing commercialization of traditional examples like cafes and bars. In the old version, these spaces were convivial because people from all walks of life could gather and interact--in no small way facilitated by the employees. As these businesses become corporatized, they also mirror the increasing stratification in society: why would a patron talk to a lowly barista? Immediately, the entire dynamic changes and there is a poisonous element in the air. If third spaces like this are dying, perhaps public spaces will become even more integral as they assume some of the social roles previously served by bars etc.
1. Are mobile communication technologies good for public spaces? Do they reverse a trend of disintegration triggered by the rise of earlier, home-based electronic media?
2. Have third spaces lost their charm? If so, what locales fill this need today? Or, is the need obviated as people cultivate their own person-based phsyical/electonic social networks?
3. What other spaces will be/are reshaped by internet penetration? Airports? Public-transit? Waiting rooms? Are we going to bemoan the destruction of these spaces too?
Comments (3)
You mentioned that the commercialization of public spaces may have certain influences on existing public spaces. I want to ask you to elaborate on your points here.
From the past, cafes and bars were not free. And, these places tend to be open primarily for literate, free, white males. This is what Habermas assumed in explicating his concept of public sphere.
I beleive that people's access to public spaces increases thanks to more leisure time and increasing levels of education. Also, by using mobile, personal techology, people can go outside home and manage their own network as well as enjoying copresence with their fellow citizens.
Posted by cj | October 28, 2006 4:39 PM
Posted on October 28, 2006 16:39
Lol – I keep waiting to find references to Marvin’s book in these new technologies articles as I think that they could benefit from reviewing her arguments and then maybe they might ask other questions about the new technologies – ie. ones that haven’t been asked about the phone and the tv and all other “new” technologies.
As to your questions – Third Places haven’t lost their charm. We’re just not looking in the right spaces for the new Third Places. Well, a few people are (look at comic book shops, porn theatres, mall food courts, MySpace, etc., like a few brave researchers). I think what we are actually witnessing with recent academic-obsessing on those spaces that once seemed like ideal candidates for Third Spaces (local pubs, etc.) and what would have been their logical progeny (internet cafes) is evidence of academic elitism, self-privileging, and short-sighted naval gazing (God, I sound like Bill O’Reilly!...but I have a valid point…really!!).
Scholars keep looking at spaces that they want to be Third Places and ignoring those that *really are* contemporary Third Places because they’ve associated certain values with traditional Third Places (ie. union movements, progressive mid-20th century politics, the pseudo-historical intellectual chatter of French salons) and have completely written-off the possibility that Third Places (well, at least those that are worthy of study) could exist elsewhere and, perhaps, exist for reasons that might be distasteful to those of us who lean a bit to the left or who believe in some form of rational discourse-enabled liberal democracy. Have you ever read a study about what happens in the McDonalds section of Wal Mart? I haven’t, and I don’t expect to anytime soon because the very idea that Wal Mart might host a Third Place is so distasteful to most American academics that it verges on being blasphemous (and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t get a grant to do it because of these very prejudices, even though I’d love to!)
The local pub has lost its charm and, as CJ points out in the above comment, the Habermasian charm of these places was always reserved for a select group of people. Third Places have always been exclusive and ruled by the territorial concerns of the patrons of those spaces. I defy anybody to find a Third Place where we are actually capable of checking our differences at the door in order to engage in democracy-encouraging festivities! The Third Place “need” is being met (although it isn’t and never was so utopic as had been promoted in academic literature) – but academics have yet to figure out (or admit to themselves that they’ve figured out) that it is being met in places that aren’t quite as easy to digest as the French salon and the Union local. Some Third Places and the “needs” they are filling may be downright scary to some of us!
Finally, you worry about the corporatization of the traditional Third Place. I respond by arguing that those who need Third Places take their business elsewhere and/or encourage corportization in order to empower themselves. Third Places will never lose their charm; just those older and less dynamic definitions of them.
Posted by Chris/G14 | October 29, 2006 11:36 PM
Posted on October 29, 2006 23:36
What other spaces will be/are reshaped by internet penetration?
Good question--all these articles are awfully coffee-shop-centric, but there are other venues out there. Here's a big question: what about bars? People seem awfully concerned about losing the "third-placeness" supposedly inherent in the neighborhood cafe, but no one is (yet) bemoaning a sudden lack of interest in consuming alcohol in group settings. Cause, you know, there isn't one. And it's not just because people don't (yet) bring their laptops out drinking...after all, they do have their mobile phones/Treos/Blackberries. So why the lack of concern? My hypothesis: that everyone gets, intuitively, that bars fill a need that's not going away. Sure, smoking bans and PDA's might change the dynamic on the micro level, but that's as far as we'll let it go. Cafes, on the other hand--we're more iffy about those. We feel good about ourselves when we go to them, but we're not sure why. Is it just because we look good in berets? Perhaps our confusion about exactly what cafes are leads us to start hypothesizing about their potential functions (social capital machines! third places! weak network externalizers!), when what it should tell us is perhaps that "the cafe" is just too unwieldly to be a useful unit of analysis. To sum up: See you later, Starbucks. I'm doing my field research at my local dive bar.
Posted by Emily | October 29, 2006 11:54 PM
Posted on October 29, 2006 23:54