Book chapter
The material cellphone
The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World, pp.699-712
Oxford University Press
2013
Abstract
The cellphone is at once a transformative, even revolutionary, technology but also an artefact of social fragmentation and managerial/administrative command-control. This chapter explores the contradictory discursive record of utopic and dystopic accounts of the cellphone. The former anchors the cellphone’s historical time to high capitalist consumerism, a purported source of happiness, development, and revolution. Dystopic accounts are more likely to emphasize the record of techno-criticism aimed at the quasi-religious nature of the utopian discourse, highlighting popular and literary protests against the harms to workers and ecosystems. The dystopic perspective points archaeological research to a crucial layer of evidence that moves from a focus on utopian/dystopian forms of consciousness to one centred on the gadget’s chemico-mechanical materiality and the toxic environmental legacy it bequeaths to future generations.
Details
- Title
- The material cellphone
- Authors/Creators
- R. Maxwell (Author/Creator) - Queens College, CUNYT. Miller (Author/Creator)
- Contributors
- P. Graves-Brown (Editor)R. Harrison (Editor)A. Piccini (Editor)
- Publication Details
- The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World, pp.699-712
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press; Oxford, England
- Identifiers
- 991005544418707891
- Copyright
- 2013 Oxford University Press
- Murdoch Affiliation
- Murdoch University
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
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