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by
Douglas Kelbaugh, FAIA, Professor and Dean
So call me, call me in the morning
Call me in the night, so call me
Call me anytime you like
My phone's on vibrate for you, for you"
—Rufus Wainwright |
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Technological innovation and scientific progress amaze and titillate us. And swamp us. The media are quick to point out the positive social, economic, environmental, or health impacts of discoveries and inventions. We generally think of technological change, or are led to think about it, as an unalloyed good that in some way catches up with, maybe overtakes, or even puts to rest, a problem.
Medicine is a good example. We read about new medical treatments and medications that treat, even eliminate, disease. We also read in history books about people from the past who suffered or died from diseases and maladies that we now routinely cure or manage—small pox, tuberculosis, scurvy, ulcers, bacterial infections, rubella, and polio (whose cure was happily announced 50 years ago this spring at UM). Our life expectancy continues to grow, now almost 80 years for American females. We live longer and live better. It is a remarkable story of advances and successes.
Nonetheless, we need to be more mindful of the trade-offs and unintended consequences and externalities. Even though we're not sure of the units of measurement, the score may not be as positive as it appears. If there was an overall metric, we'd probably find that the margin of "progress" would be less than, say, the growth in the GNP or the number of miles we drive or fly or, for that matter, the remarkable lengthening of life expectancy (because the quality of life can be low toward the end of our extended life span). I wonder, though, if anyone knowledgeable and responsible is even trying to keep the total, comprehensive score. Or if we know or will ever know enough to do the accounting. Are we cluelessly sleepwalking into the future, as James Kunstler opines in his aptly-titled new book, The
Long Emergency, which makes a persuasive case for a dramatic post-petroleum downsizing and downgrading of our lifestyles.1
Given the information revolution theme of this Portico, let's look at a commonplace information technology (IT), cellular telephones. It's a $40 billion industry poised to deliver the wireless revolution to two billion people, twice as many as were connected by telephone over the last 100 years. Most of us already wonder how we ever lived without cellphones. 175,000,000 Americans have used them, as of January 2005.2 A recent UM survey showed that over eight in ten cellphone users say "the device has made their lives easier."3 Their benefits are well known: convenience, value in emergencies, low initial and operating costs, as well as lower infrastructure costs than land line telephones. Almost 90 percent of those surveyed agreed that cellphones were most important for emergency situations and for letting others know they're running late (which cellphones arguably encourage). Over one-third in the survey of some 750 Americans said people using IT had less free time (italics mine).4
And, on first blush, there seem to be relatively insignificant externalities, i.e. social, economic, or environmental costs: inferior reception, uneven coverage, reduced personal privacy, possible identity theft, interrupted public gatherings, interference with airplane/control tower communications, and redundancy of towers built by competing providers. For better or worse, cellphone ringtones are now available in myriad musical scores—from "Mary had a little lamb" to "everybody out on the dance floor." The consensus, if we judge from cellphones' meteoric rise in sales, is that the benefits trade-off very well against the costs. The cellphone is more than a hit, it's becoming a necessity.
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"We are
with someone else, who is somewhere else,
lost in telespace, a prisoner in an invisible
cell, with a remote, usually distant,
cellmate."
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Let's look at unintended
and unexpected impacts on our lives. The most obvious
is the physical danger from the ubiquitous use
of cellphones while doing other activities—most notably driving. The federal government estimates that driver distraction contributes to 20–30 percent of all motor vehicle crashes—between
one and two million accidents.5 This
risk is greater than with other drivers—who
are merely tuning radios, stretching for something
in the glove compartment (but very rarely gloves),
applying makeup, shaving, retrieving dropped cigarettes,
reading a map, calming pets or kids, kissing or
talking to passengers, and from time to time actually
steering the vehicle! Some 40 countries now restrict
or prohibit the use of cellphones while driving.6
Although the evidence is not clear, some researchers claim the radiation from phones may also impair reaction time and short-term memory, physiologically increasing the risk of accidents after you've hung up.7 (Others
say it actually increases short-term memory.) Washington, D.C. now imposes heavy
fines for using cellphones without an earpiece while operating a vehicle. And
then there may possibly be direct health risk of exposure to potentially cancer-causing
microwaves that radiate your brain, which happens to be very nearby. Telephone,
fax, and email may turn out to be healthier IT modes. However, all these communication
technologies can reduce the need for physical trips and are-in that sense-a boon
to environmental, social, and economic sustainability.
What do cellphones have to do with architecture, urban design, and planning? In addition to possibly reducing the amount of travel, there is the impact on public space, where people almost everywhere seem to have cellphones glued to their ears. To a Martian, it might appear that these little devices actually animate, if not fuel, Earthlings. (But an aborigine from the remote corners of the earth wouldn't be fooled, as the cellphone can be found almost everywhere on this planet.) It is not uncommon for us to physically occupy the public realm (street, plaza, park, airport) or semi-public realm (restaurant, bar, hotel lobby, clinic, etc.) but not be there mentally or socially. We are with someone else, who is somewhere else, lost in telespace, a prisoner in an invisible cell, with a remote cellmate.
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"Clapping a cellphone closed may be the contemporary equivalent of doffing your hat."
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This pre-occupation
is not only selfish and annoying to others, it
undermines one of the most fundamental and valuable
dimensions of public space and public life-the
chance encounters and serendipitous interactions
of people who know each other and, probably more
important in a democracy, people who don't know
each other and may not want to know each other. These kinds of encounters, observations,
and exchanges between friends and strangers are essential to a healthy, egalitarian
community. Portable phones reduce not only oral interaction but also the brief
and subtle interpersonal give and take of eye contact, body language, and common
courtesies and civilities. (Clapping a cellphone closed may be the contemporary
equivalent of doffing your hat.) These civil niceties are already in a decline
that the cellphone has accelerated. This technology is no friend to public places,
or the sense of place.
Architecture is also impacted. The use of cellphones within interiors of buildings
can alter and, I would argue, devalue architecture and its devices. If a central
role of urban design and planning is to encourage community and public life,
a time-honored role of architecture is the provision of physical privacy and
security. Walls, from solid and opaque to perforated and transparent, have long
been deployed—artfully we hope—to provide varying degrees of openness and privacy, as well as to define collective and individual space. Cellphones and other information technologies can pierce steel and concrete walls like bullets through butter, their electromagnetic waves far too small for normal architectural materials to even see, much less stop. They also penetrate your flesh and bones and possibly radiate your brain to a degree that some researchers claim may cause brain tumors. The FDA states there is no hard evidence for these claims. But the issue remains sensitive. (When a University of Washington cellphone researcher "found
disturbing data, funding became tight and one industry leader threatened legal
action."8)
These two media—architecture and cellphones—are invisible to each other, on different wavelengths, literally. Impenetrability—so basic physical security—has been compromised by one of the littlest of the universe's building blocks-the
electron. Stone, one of the largest, oldest, and most durable of building blocks,
and some would say among the most beautiful, is as transparent to electronics
as glass is to light. For thousands of years, we've piled stone upon solid stone
to create sound shelter and provide secure sanctuary. (We've also used stones
as lethal projectiles, but that is the history of war, another story equally
full of the paradoxical benefits and horrors of the new technologies that the
military has always spawned.) And, ironically, it's little stones, crystals to
be exact, that allow for the solid state circuitry in our cellphones and for
technologies of sustainability like photovoltaics.
First with fieldstone, then ashlar masonry, and later with cut marble and granite,
architects have designed and erected edifices that are not just private, safe,
and secure but also elaborate and magnificent. In some cases, we wall off outer
and inner sanctums to increase isolation. More typically today, we use the horizontal
spread of our front and back yards—space rather than walls—to separate ourselves. We also utilize fences, gates, and doors, with elaborate architectural cues about where to enter-designed to beckon you up stairs, across courtyards, or down axes—only
to find public entrances now locked for security reasons. These architectural
barriers, as well as locked doors, have been cut through by electronic communication,
none more common than the cellphone. We all live and work in glass houses now,
electronically naked. And many public entrances are permanently locked.
And I wonder about the necessity and the quality of many cellphone conversations, which are so easy and cheap, without apparent personal or social cost. It's as if the phones are hard-wired into some people's central nervous systems and using them is akin to metabolic activity.
For my children and their friends, especially when they were teenagers, it is stream of consciousness, with few hellos and quick goodbyes. On the other hand, they are very connected to their network of friends and families; and their speed-dialing cellphones are an inseparable, essential part of their existence.
Whether "progress" is illusory or real is an old question. How much we serve
technology and how much it serves us is a conundrum that has long bedeviled humankind.
Pundits and keen observers of life have struggled, especially since the Enlightenment,
with technological determinism. Postmodernity has challenged the endlessly progressive
Modernist project, and its logically positivist view of science and technology.
(Invention is the origin of technology, but not necessarily the mother of architecture
and urbanism, which are more complex phenomena.) However, this questioning and
worry are usually parlor speculation and academic conceit, as we rarely, if ever,
turn back or down a new invention or technology. Atomic power plants and TV cameras
in the courtroom are refreshing examples of either reversing ourselves or saying
no in the first place. Also large corporations often buy up and squelch small
companies with promising new ideas if they threaten their new capital investments
and/or sunk costs. Cisco buys an average of two start-up companies every month
to extinguish, delay, or develop their promising ideas!9
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"Whether 'progress' is illusory or real is an old question. How much we serve technology and how much it serves us is a conundrum that has long bedeviled humankind."
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Almost without exception, we vote with our dollars and feet in favor of new technologies. We are seduced by ever more sophisticated marketing to buy things we don't need or before we need them. And there's the therapeutic high of shopping. But consuming keeps our happiness up or, at the least its illusion, as well as contributing to social status. And it keeps our economy going and growing. (We used to be urged to save, now it's to spend. I'm confused.)
We are continually reminded that growth is the Holy Grail of our economic system and acquisitiveness is the key to material happiness. Thus we blithely accelerate into our future, an ever brighter, more technological one. It's fun, even exhilarating, as we Americans consume five to ten times our global share of goods and resources, while producing a commensurate per capita share of greenhouse gases. Racing ahead, innovating, winning, growing is breathlessly exciting, however paradoxical the results of our progress. The more we rush, the more we seem to stay in the same place, albeit a more complex place. In any case, the trip is endlessly interesting. Call me on my cell when we get there.
Note: This is the first of what may be a series of longer articles and opinion pieces in Portico. Let us know if you think this is a good idea. Send your comments to portico@umich.edu.
ENDNOTES
1 "The
Long Emergency," Rolling
Stone,
J. H. Kunstler, posted on their website on
March 24, 2005.
2 Insurance Information
Institute, "Cellphones
and Driving," report on website, March,
2005.
3 The University Record , March 21,
2005, p.4.
4 Ibid.
5 National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration, as reported
on the National Conference of State Legislature’s
website, January 24, 2004.
6 Insurance Information
Institute, "Cellphones
and Driving," report on website, March,
2005
7 "Cell Phones, As dangerous as driving
drunk," Reuters and Fox News Network, 1997,
as reported on Bicycle Universe website, and
elsewhere.
8 "Wake-Up Call", Columns,
University of Washington, March, 2005, pp.20–24.
9 2002 Golden Apple Award winner Dr. Elliot
Soloway, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and
Professor of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science, UM Honors Convocation, March
20, 2005. |
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