armchair. Such shells do not have to be physical; indeed, the space in front
of a computer screen is one that is intensely personalized, designed for a
single user with the right password, and with icons, characters and images
which demand a face-to-screen association.
Mobile privatization is not merely a trend in domestic and civic
life; it also mediates the modern workplace (see Greenfield, 1999) and
post-workplace trends evident in telework (see Morelli, 2001). The most
important feature of Williams’ concept for the present discussion is that
media-based mobility can be interactive or derived from broadcast. In
Television, Technology and Cultural Form(1974) Williams describes how the
increasingly private refuge of home and family generates the need for ‘new
kinds of contact’ and ‘news from “outside”, from otherwise inaccessible
sources’ (27). Such a need generated from the fact of urbanization may be
met just as much by letters and telephone as it is by Internet connections,
mobile telephones and texting. However, the more mobile and portable
such means of connection are, the more we can translate the private refuge
of the home into the electronically generated recluse of communication
bubbles which de-realize our relation to physical public space. The more
such bubbles are occupied, the less likely are face-to-face forms of recog-
nition. What face-to-face relations do exist in the public sphere are jeop-
ardized, or made more schizophrenic, by the always open possibility that
a mobile phone will ring or a message device will beep.
The endgame of mobile privatization is, according to Arthur and
Marilouise Kroker (1996), a radically divided self – a self which is at war
with itself – split between an embodied self and an electronic identity.
Because of this, there is a demand on each individual to find protective
shells in which to co-exist. The Walkman and the mobile phone are power-
ful examples of the micro-personalization of the self in public life – what
the Krokers call the ‘electronic self’:... the electronic self is torn between contradictor y impulses towards
privacy and the public, the natural self and the social self, private imagi-
nation and electronic fantasy. The price for reconciling the divided self by
sacrificing one side of the electronic personality is severe. If it abandons
private identity and actually becomes media (Cineplex mind, IMAX imagi-
nation, MTV chat, CNN ner ves), the electronic self will suffer terminal
repression. However, if it seals itself off from public life by retreating to an
electronic cell in the suburbs or a computer condo in the city, it quickly
falls into an irreal world of electronic MOO-room fun within the armoured
windows. (74)The electronic self seeks to ‘immunize itself against the worst effects of
public life’ by ‘bunkering in’.Bunkering in is the epochal consciousness of technological society in its
most mature phase. McLuhan called it the ‘cool personality’ typical of the
TV age, others have spoken of ‘cocooning’ away the 90s, but we would say92 COMMUNICATION THEORYHolmes-04.qxd 2/15/2005 1:00 PM Page 92