We shall soon be nothing but transparent heaps of jelly to each other
Authors: Prater David , Miller Sarah 
Published: October 2020

Use of technologies in domestic spaces in a market economy suggests a certain notion of consumption. But is this the same as consumption or use of technologies in public spaces such as urban streets, internet cafes and libraries? As Baudrillard has argued, consumption can be seen as a form of desire for social meaning and interaction [1988]. How then do we describe the types of social interaction made possible by virtualising technologies, and the tensions between these interactions and the physical spaces in which they take place?
Studies of the social and behavioural impacts of new technologies often focus on the home as a site where these technologies (for example, radio and television) are consumed, appropriated, fetishised or made into artefacts by their owners. For example Silverstone and Haddon [1996] speak of the domestication of new technologies as a process involving four stages, making a claim for the role of users/consumers and consumption in the production, design and innovation of technologies - a role which has until recently very rarely been acknowledged. Such a process is dependent on the processes of a capitalist market system in general, which sets roles for people not just in the workplace but in the home as well.
Historically this system informed the distinction between public and private spaces. Embedded in this dichotomy are notions of gender, class and race. While Silverstone and Haddon are showing the artificiality of the distinction, their assumption that consumption is a largely domestic activity reinforces the public/private divide. This however begs the question of how technologies are consumed and indeed, whether this is even the right word to use when describing such uses in public spaces.
It is ironic that our consumption of technologies has become so public and yet so disconnected from traditional notions of social interaction. The mobile phone, numbers of which surpassed fixed lines for the first time last year in Australia [ACA 2002] is a much-hyped case in point. In our new mobile condition we minimise social encounters with strangers on the street and avoid face-to-face contact. Instead we invest in mediated faceless conversations with known counterparts through text messaging and mobile telephony. After all, as Baudrillard says, most of these machines are used for delusion, for eluding communication (leave a message) for absolving us of the face-to-face relation and the social responsibility. [1995]
This may in part explain the sense of anxiety often expressed by commentators (and users) in respect of these new technologies. Perhaps the falling back on a form of technological determinism is in actual fact the expression of a profound pessimism, similar to that voiced by a journalist in a London newspaper in 1897: We shall soon be nothing but transparent heaps of jelly to each other. [Marvin 1988, 68]
The use of technologies in public spaces in our own time use has not until recently been noted, even in official statistics, due perhaps to an overwhelming preoccupation with domestic access. It must also be acknowledged that Australian government policy with respect to the Internet during the last decade has assumed that the functions of the free market will deliver access to the home, the assumption being that, like the fixed line telephone, the domestic Internet will eventually become ubiquitous. And, indeed, home computer ownership has risen over time; household connections to the Internet have also risen sharply, and a large number of Australians also access the Internet from work [ABS 2001].
Public libraries, tertiary institutions and friend or neighbour's house as sites of access make up a mere remainder in these statistics. And yet, the inclusion of these three categories makes for a far more complete picture when discussing effective use. What do people use technologies in public spaces for? Are these uses different to domestic uses? If not, what does this suggest about public use, in terms of present policy and provision?
We can notionally divide the complex set of places known as public space into four categories: civic spaces (including libraries), commercial spaces (including malls, shops and arcades), public spaces (such as the street and the park) and semi-privat(is)e(d) spaces.
The shopping mall, for example, is a semi-privatised space, which mediates both the type of users and their activities through surveillance and obtrusive design (images of the street). The library, as a civic space, represents a place in which the use of new technologies (for example the Internet, if not the mobile phone) can be both appropriate (i.e. relevant) and equitable. But what of Internet access in other public spaces? The existence of a growing body of literature relating to mobile phone use in public spaces, for example, suggests that the relationship between new technologies and space is fluid [see Lee 1999; also DoCoMo Reports 2000]
At a more basic, societal level, interactions between people on the street have historically been mediated by considerations of gender, occupation and disability [see for example, Rendell's male rambler]. In the same way as the provision of public access is often miscast as being solely for those without access at home, so too the street has been characterised as a site whose occupiers are transient, homeless or otherwise unengaged (for example, unemployed). So, what happens when the street meets the commercial imperative, as in the case of an Internet cafe?
Most Internet cafes in Australia operate on a commercial basis. A further distinction can be made between pay-per-session and free public access Internet cafes. Within the pay-per-session category we may locate not only Internet cafes but also kiosks (the vending machine approach to access) and wireless Internet users; while within the free category we could include libraries, community centres and tertiary institutions. Each of these spaces induce certain kinds of activities, encourage and discourage certain forms of behaviour. When we add use of the Internet, which in itself functions as a semi-private space, this cocktail of design, use, consumption and communication becomes very potent indeed.
Crang describes the intersection of two different kinds of spaces: the architectural (where forms are entered and moved through) and the cinematic (where pictures move in front of an unmoving person) (2000, 5). We would argue that Internet cafes, especially those where customers are visible to passers-by on the street, embody this essentially urban, interactive, consumption-driven shopping mall kind of a space, whose 'liberties of action' (to borrow Sawhney's phrase) are contained not within the present but a (perhaps misnamed) hyperreality. This approach has been taken by several multimedia Internet cafes in Australia, notably the Ngapartji centre in Adelaide, where "Equity of access is underlined by the vision of the walk-in, hands-on, street-front showcase of high-end multimedia Timezone for grown-ups. [Green 1996]
This is an overwhelmingly urban notion of space. Public space in non-urban areas, by comparison, is located within a predominantly civic framework (the ANZAC memorial, the Town Hall). It's therefore apparent that an examination of public space in terms of strict public/private demarcations must also take into account the inter-relationship between urbanisation and consumption. Crang's image-event (2000, 12) may have many manifestations, not all of which will fit into simple dichotomies such as public/private, commercial/charitable, streetside/inside.
What then can we say about users of technologies in public spaces, engaged in a notionally private act in a public space, mediated by a cash transaction? In what ways is this complex interaction made possible by (or embedded within) the design of the Internet cafe itself? Does the kind of public space induce particular forms of behaviour or usage? How do people interact with each other in these public spaces, whilst also engaging with another community, whose sole physical presence is a screen? One could argue, as Connery [1997] does, that the cafe metaphor is appropriate not so much to the space itself, but to the interactions between people on mailing and discussion lists, whose interplay occurs, perhaps ironically, in a virtual space.
Internet cafes occupy a vague, barely-researched space somewhere in between the home and the office. They are an example of the intersection between new communications technologies and sites where leisure activities take place. They are at once intensely public but also intensely private. Lee's (1999) study of an Internet cafe and its users is timely, as it refutes the notion that public access encourages totally different users and use, a point of view summed up in a (no longer accessible) 1999 BT OpenWorld market analysis of Internet cafes: The clientele will largely consist of people who appreciate the usefulness of the Internet, but have no other access to it. These circumstances will not continue indefinitely, as PC ownership is increasing daily.
In other words, you'd better get in quick, before universal domestic access kills your business! Lee's study runs counter to this view, suggesting that the progression from public access to domestic access is not linear, and that people frequent Internet cafes for a variety of reasons, and may indeed have access elsewhere. Lee's conclusion that peoples' use of Internet cafes is directly connected to their home and work life suggests the need for a re-examination of the kinds of public access being made available, and the public policy assumptions behind this access.
Public use does not necessarily equate with a lack of access elsewhere. In fact, mobile Internet users may use public access as an adjunct to their daily activities; travelling users may log on to workstations en route to another destination; public library users may be accessing training, Internet facilities and bibliographic databases at the same time. It is a matter of concern that recent government policies have shown little recognition of these subtleties in both users and their activities.

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics, 8147.0 Use of the Internet by Householders, Australia (Final Issue: November 2000) and 8146.0 Household Use of Information Technology.
Australian Communications Authority (2002) Media Release: Mobile Numbers Up by 25%, 13 February [http://www.aca.gov.au/media/2002/02-06.htm (viewed 6 March 2002)]Baudrillard, J.(1995) The virtual illusion for the Automatic writing of the World in Theory, Culture and Society, 12: 97-107.
Baudrillard, J.(1998) The Consumer Society, Myths and Structures, Sage, London
Connery, B. (1997) IMHO: Authority and Egalitarian Rhetoric in the Virtual Coffeehouse, in Porter, D. (ed.) Internet Culture, Routledge.
Crang, M. (2000) Public Space, Urban Space and Electronic Space: Would the Real City Please Stand Up? in Urban Studies February, 37.2: 301.
DoCoMo Reports (2000) No. 9 (The use of cell phones/PHS phones in everyday life) and No. 10 (Current trends in mobile phone usage among adolescents) NTT DoCoMo (Japan), Public Relations Department [http://www.nttdocomo.com]
Green, L. (1996) Interactive Multimedia, the Cooperative Multimedia Centre Story in Media International Australia, 81: 11-20.
Lee, S. (1999) Private Uses in Public Space: a study of an Internet cafe, in New Media and Society, 1.3: 331-350.
Marvin, C. (1988) When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electronic Communications in the late 19th century, Oxford University Press.
Rendell, J. (1998) Displaying Sexuality: Gendered Identities and the early nineteenth century street, in Fyfe, N. (ed.), Images of the Street: Planning, Identity and Control in Public Space, Routledge.
Silverstone & Haddon (1996) Design and the Domestication of Information and Communication Technologies: Technical Change and Everyday Life in Mansell and Silverstone (eds.) Communication By Design: the Politics of Information and Communication Technologies. Oxford University Press. 44-74.

Links

http://www.nttdocomo.com
http://www.ngapartji.com.au
http://www.aca.gov.au/media/2002/02-06.htm

Citation reference for this article
MLA Style

Prater, David and Miller, Sarah. "We shall soon be nothing but transparent heaps of jelly to each other" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.2 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/transparent.php>.

Chicago Style

Prater, David and Miller, Sarah, "We shall soon be nothing but transparent heaps of jelly to each other" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 2 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/transparent.php> ([your date of access]).

APA Style

Prater, David and Miller, Sarah. (2002) We shall soon be nothing but transparent heaps of jelly to each other. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(2). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/transparent.php> ([your date of access]).