So often we see makers of various technology advertise it as “bringing people closer together”. Mobile phones are a great example of this. So many projects at the various media labs around the world also talk about bringing people together, or maintaining relationships while physical separated. The reality of the situation is something more like “salvaging some shreds of the kind of close relationship people had before we prioritized technology and careers above relationships and society”.

• mobile phones allow us to keep in touch with people far away, while isolating us from the people who are physically present in the same space
• the nomadic laptop cafe goer is connected to the whole world, while disconnected from the people they are sitting next to
• television allows us to sit on our couches while seeing the places all over the globe, but if you observe the TV viewer, they are in a zone where it doesn’t matter who’s on the couch with them

It is key that we get this straight when talking about technology. Is technology really “bringing us closer together”? In general, technology has triggered more isolation from the people we are sitting next to, while we can have a somewhat closer conncetion to people far away. A mobile phone is also a very useful tool for organizing people to share the same physical space. By providing information, mobile phones could create more connection between people in the same room. It’s really a matter of how we think about it.