3 :: NEW TECHNOLOGIES,
NEW MOBILITIES
flourishing of her own business. But, for Sandra, the beauty of the digital lifestyle is that
she gets to bring her family (or, more accurately, her emotional connection with her
family) along on these virtual networks. For though she might be physically separated
from family life for much of the week, the digital lifestyle of mobile communications
means she is also never far away from them – or so it seems to Sandra.Consider Sandra’s weekly journey from Leeds to London, usually under - taken by
car. A journey of approximately four hours (much longer than the train), this might
well be ‘empty time’, but Sandra (like countless motorists) prizes this time as a
period for both strategic business thinking and com - municating with others.
Viewing her car as somewhat akin to a mobile office, Sandra commences her journey
by checking her voice-activated email and subsequently undertakes various business
calls using her Blue - tooth, hands-free mobile.^3 Along the way, she also dictates
letters to her secretary on her Apple iPhone, using its ‘voice memos’ function. These
recorded letters she often emails to her secretary while taking a coffee break on the
long journey, especially if the communications are a priority and need to be sent out
later in the day. When she is not working while driving to London, Sandra’s car meta
morphoses into a personal entertainment system. She listens to music while driving,
lost in private reverie to songs that she has selected and arranged on ‘track lists’ on
her iPod.^4To be sure, Sandra plays music using various technologies – internet downloads,
iPod, iPhone – throughout her working week in London. A selfdescribed pop music
enthusiast, she likes listening to the latest hits (and mentions that she feels this draws
her closer to some of the cultural interests of her eldest daughter, Victoria). But she
also spends much time listening to past favourites – especially music current when
her children were very young, and she was at home full-time. This immersion in music,
especially being able to recapture memories and feeling-states from years gone by,
is very important to Sandra, and is a theme we develop throughout this chapter.The complex relations between digital technologies and identity are also manifest in
Sandra’s living arrangements in London. The Kensington apartment that Sandra and
her husband purchased some years ago is fitted with the standard array of new
technologies, which Sandra describes as her ‘open communication line’ to the family
in Leeds. Landline, fax, email, Skype: these are the main ways in which she keeps in
touch with her husband and children throughout the working week. In Sandra’s case,
however, such technologies are not only a medium through which to communicate
with others. Importantly, they also function as a basis for self-exploration and
self-experiment. For Sandra describes herself as immersed in, and sometimes(^3) See Eric Laurier, ‘Doing office work on
the motorway’, Theory, Culture & Society,
2004, 21: pp. 261–77.
(^4) See Michael Bull, ‘Automobility and the
power of sound’, Theory, Culture & Society,
2004, 21: pp. 243–59.