312 Mediated Publics
Skype not for long distance but to call friends in the same city since it is
much less expensive than mobile or fixed-line use.
nother form of this localized exchange is “onsite cyberdating.” A
The expression refers to a popular form of public dating in Casablanca
whereby two people meet at a cybercafé for the purpose of seeing each
other even though they do not sit next to each other. Instead they are
located at different terminal points in the room. During such onsite dates,
a couple is free to express their most intimate feelings through computer-
aided chat rooms. The rapid growth of the Moroccan population has
produced a demographic in which over 65 percent of the population is
under the age of 35. This fact, coupled with widespread unemployment
and underemployment, has created a new generation of men and women
who find themselves unable to afford moving into marital apartments or
homes—a prerequisite for marriage, particularly in urban Morocco. The
average age of marriage since 1980 has risen from 17 to 24 for women,
and among men it is not uncommon to find bachelors well into their
thirties. As a result, an unprecedented number of adult men and women
find themselves unmarried in a culture that recognizes only two legiti-
mate conditions of sexuality—virgin status and marital status. Dating as
a social practice among men and women remains an illegitimate form of
sociality. In a public where the sight of “boyfriends and girlfriends” hold-
ing hands while out on a date is anathema to normal standards of social
practice, onsite dating practices in cybers provide a valuable space of pri-
vacy enacted in a public setting.^34
rom this brief exploration of social practices in cybercafés, from F
gaming and casual conversations between people at terminals to onsite
cyberdating, it is apparent that they provide the public with unprec-
edented means of socializing and gathering information. In such prac-
tices physical disembodiment is only part of the innovated social expe-
rience occurring in the technogenic moment. Cybergoers do use digital
channels to expand their social networks and participate in information
flows in a global arena. At the same time, rich forms of social exchange
between embodied actors on the ground are an integral feature of social-
ity in cybers. The kinds of localized social exchanges taking place in ICT
access sites suggest that the abstract notion of an “information society”
manifests itself in situated social practices.