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Phatic Culture: Too Much of a Good Thing? The dawn of a new era is upon us. Around the globe, inhabitants of every modernized culture are more constantly connected with their friends and family than ever in human history. The language being used is universal: phatic communion. Surely Bronislaw Malinowski never imagined the phatic technologies being developed today and marketed to consumers worldwide, ushering in what Vincent Miller calls a phatic culture, (388) where physically separated human beings are able to enjoy each others company (Malinowski 297) through the exchange of casual communication. This paper will present a clear picture of the epochal societal changes occurring due to significant advances in communications technology. Theorists opine whether these changes are good, bad, or a mixture of both, but few debate that the way in which human beings relate is undergoing fundamental change. While Phatic communion as Malinowski presented it is certainly a good thing, I will suggest here that pervasive technological mediation energized in large part by the commodification of said mediation is resulting in too much of a good thing; thus, phatic communion is being devalued.
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Phatic Communions Heyday Malinowski described phatic communion as free social intercourse in which the meaning of words is almost completely beside the point (Malinowski 296). He observed that human beings ranging from the most civilized to the most savage all share the same need for the presence of others, and this presence is most commonly established and maintained through the mere exchange of words void of any other purpose (297).
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As late modern life becomes increasingly disembedded1, the need for the affirming presence of others (i.e. phatic communion) has become greater. As Anthony Giddens says in The Transformation of Intimacy: late modern subjects gravitate toward relationships which engender trust through constant communication (qtd. in Miller 389). Technological advances have made these kinds of relationships possible through what Christian Licoppe calls connected presence. A professor in the sociology of technology, Liccope indentifies a changing social landscape, where common practice is the connected management of relationships, in which the (physically) absent party renders himself or herself present by multiplying mediated communication gestures up to the point where copresent interactions and mediated communication seem woven in a seamless web (Licoppe 135). In other words, in our day it is possible for people to always be there for one another via various electronic devices (connected presence), thus filling in the gaps when they are not physically together (copresence). For instance, after waving goodbye as she watches a loved one drive away, the technologically adept person might send an affirming text message: love you, take care, drive safely. Her departing friend might then send out numerous electronic messages to a list of friends updating them on any interesting sights he takes in on the road trip home. So, even though they are apart, in one sense they are still very much together. What was spaceage fantasy only twenty years ago has now become a reality. Todays young people are growing up in a world where constant phatic communion is the norm. Their lives are filled with online instant messaging, social networking through websites such as Facebook and MySpace, and text messaging with
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cell phones. The most recent phenomenon, and surely the most purely phatic, is Twitter. A microblogging service started in 2006, Twitter is described by Miller as a kind of cross between social networking, blogging, and text messaging (396). Participants use their cell phones or the web to constantly post brief messages usually devoid of substantive content that simply update their social network about what they are doing: going to the store, feeling overwhelmed with this paper,enjoying the beautiful day. The purpose of these tweets is primarily phatic; participants simply want to stay connected to one another. Similarly, Facebook has a distinctly phatic feature called the poke. The poke is an inbuilt function that was created by Facebook without any specific purpose (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 9). The idea behind the poke is to simply let the recipient know you are there and thinking about him or her. Facebook also has a chat feature, which works much like other instant messaging applications. Again, the typical language used in a chat conversation is brief and shallow. Though it can be used to convey information, the most common function of online chatting is a phatic one (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 12). The most prevalent mediator of phatic communion is the mobile phone. Research indicates that cell phone calls are shorter and more frequent than landline conversations (Licoppe 142). Though these conversations sometimes serve the purpose of conveying information, quite often their use is purely phatic: Rather than constructing a shared experience by telling each other about small and big events during the day and the week, interlocutors exchange small expressive messages signaling a perception, a feeling, or an emotion, or requiring from the other person the same type of expressive message. In the case of a very close relationship, these calls tend to be as frequent as possible because the more

T" "

that this presence maintained over a distance through mobile phones is continuous, the more reassuring it is in terms of the link. (Licoppe 147) Text messaging takes us one step further down the phatic path. Nokia boldly proclaims mobile messaging is the modern way to communicate. Its instant, location independent, and personal (qtd. In Reid and Reid 1). It is hard to dispute Nokias point. Over 2 trillion messages were sent around the globe in 2008, with revenues estimated to be around $65-75 billion. Through text messaging, people maintain a contextless sense of immediacy to their closest friends. In research done with two groups of undergraduate students at Bond University in Australia, Lacohee, Wakeford, and Pearson found that text messages between students were low in information, but high in social grooming, i.e. letting someone know that you are thinking about them (qtd. in Horstmanshof and Power 47). Horstmanshof and Power also found that young people often fill empty time by sending out multiple text messages, counting on the likelihood that at least one of the hooks they have put in the water will get a bite (46).
Moved down [1]: I have personally witnessed my 13 year old son swimming in a virtual soup of phatic communion. Sitting in front of the computer screen with a cell phone in his left hand and a mouse in his right, he conducts one or two text messaging conversations while scanning his long list of friends on Facebook. Some are poking him, while others are greeting him through the chat application. He soaks in it, pleased with every ping and beep that tells him he is being thought of, even wanted. And I have to ask myself if this is good for him, if this connected presence is helping or hurting his relationships with his friends and family. Comment [7]: C+).)"/$)'"*+5'"529$.(&*5$2" 7$()"9.$(A" Deleted: Regarding the popularity of text messaging, one analyst stated there can only be one conclusion drawn the most popular services are usually communications-based not entertainment, not information, but communications (Paul Budde Communication).

Are we more connected, or less? In 2008, sociologist Richard Ling published a book entitled New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion. He asserts that mobile communication enhances the connection between a participant and her friends and family, but that this improvement is sometimes at the expense of interaction with those who are in the same room (Ling 3). In other words, a young lady who is constantly exchanging text messages with her boyfriend while out with the girls might be doing a

Deleted: co-present

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good job at maintaining her connection with her boyfriend, but she is robbing her girlfriends of her full attention in the process. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece, a journalist reflects on a recent trip to Paris. He laments that he never actually talked with the driver who picked him up at the airport and taxied him to his hotel room (they were together for one hour). The driver was on his cell phone the whole time, while the journalist was on his laptop and had his iPod in his ears. The writer wonders if the journalistic tradition of getting good quotes from local taxi drivers is waning, then worries that technology is dividing us as much as uniting us (Friedman). This certainly appears to be the case with taxi drivers, as New York City is currently considering implementing a system that will disable cell phone use in the front seat of taxis. Apparently, their constant chattering on cell phones is a safety concern and a nuisance to passengers. One cabbie responded that they should put cell-phone blockers in the back seat instead (Martins and Donohue). Divided indeed. Along this line of thought, Horstmanshof and Power note: In the past, a journey, particularly a journey to the other side of the world, would be seen as an opportunity to take another perspective, and to be influenced by new contacts and to make new friends. However, if, via the mobile phone and inexpensively through SMS, people are able to remain in constant contact with friends already known, travel may not be so broadening. (44) Indeed, the capacity for continuous mediated interaction has not only begun to blur the boundaries between absence and presence (Licoppe 136), but Grant & Keisler and Green have also identified a collapsing of distinctions between private and public spheres of life (qtd. in Mazmanian, Orlikowski and Yates 4). Green identifies this blurring

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as a kind of spatial and temporal boundary rearrangement (Green, 2002, p. 287), finding that the use of cell phones encourages the embedding of public activities and responsibilities into private time and space (e.g., the home), as well as the integration of private commitments and relationships into the public sphere this potentially fragments both public and private interactions, collapsing each into the other. (qtd. in Mazmanian, Orlikowski and Yates 4) A fifth grade teacher, for example, recently told me about a colleague who had cancelled a field trip due to inclement weather. The weather wasnt really that bad, she said, but the teacher commented that parents are not much help anymore because they just stand around talking or texting on their cell phones. In each of these examples, connected presence supersedes copresence; mediated communication prevails over face-to-face interaction; virtual reality wins out over personal relationship. This behavior is encouraged and extended by Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace which provide the opportunity for phatic communication that is largely motivated less by having something to say (i.e. communicating some kind of information), as it is by the obligation or encouragement to say something to maintain connections or audiences, to let ones network know that one is still there (Miller 393). Though these social networking sites provide fresh opportunities for mediated connection with new or old friends, Andreas Wittel sees a flattening of social bonds due to networked sociality (qtd. in Miller 388). In other words, a social networkers number of friends is constantly expanding, but the concept of friend is getting spread precariously thin: Close members of ones inner circle sit alongside strangers under the same banner in an endlessly expanding horizontal network, thus compressing social
Deleted: Most of us are aware of this troubling pattern emerging in our society. In a 2005 nationwide survey conducted by the University of Michigan, 62 percent agreed with the statement Using a cell phone in public is a major irritation for other people (Ling 93). Even though most recognize the problem, few resist the allure of the dazzling capabilities of the latest electronic marvel. ... [1]

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relations and eliminating context. The only context present is the egocentric nature of the network itself. In other words, friends as a whole create the context in which ones profile sits and from which identity emerges. (Miller 393) Thus, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace entail a communicative practice more interested in making and keeping connections than in telling stories or engaging in vibrant dialogue. Miller calls this our emerging phatic culture.
Deleted: When blogging became popular in the 90s, individualization characterized much of the communication evidenced by an explosion of personal narratives online and in print. Indeed, in our society compulsive intimacy has become a major way to overcome disembeddedness and the continual reconstruction of social bonds (Miller 389). However, social networking sites have displaced blogs as societys preeminent virtual gathering place, eliciting what Manovich calls a database orientation rather than a narrative orientation (qtd. in Miller 390). Unlike blogging, Deleted: s Deleted: As previously stated, Twitter embodies this phatic culture more than any development to date. Existing essentially for the maintenance of a connect presence, Twitter is necessarily devoid of meaningful content. Though its popularity is growing by leaps and bounds, even its users admit to being concerned about the pointlessness of it all (Miller 397). One successful CEO confessed that his obsession with Twitter was more than his wife could take: The late modern pursuit of the ultimate the ultimate connected presence has led to one amazing technological development after another; but the question remains: are we more connected, or less? Or, as Malinowski might ask, are we enjoying one another more, or less?

Where do we go from here? In a forthcoming chapter in a book entitled Awareness Systems, Frank Vetere presents emerging phatic technologies and applauds how they sustain sociability. Numerous studies have chronicled the increased flow of information through ubiquitous computing, but only recently have researchers considered the significance of new media technology as a channel for phatic communion. Vetere and his colleagues at the University of Melbourne, Australia are among a growing number of specialists from a wide variety of disciplines who are enthusiastically pointing the way toward achieving a feeling of ongoing connectedness via technology (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 5). For instance, the authors mention the value of wasting time with a loved one as a valuable expression of caring. They also point to the improvement in health that aged people experience when they interact with their grandchildren. More than a simple phone call, Vetere et al say that studies have shown that a more personal, richer context, such as play activity, is required. However, Vetere et al are uncritical proponents of emerging phatic technology that promises to virtually provide personal,

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Moved down [2]: The late modern pursuit of the ultimate connected presence has led to one amazing technological development after another; but the question remains: are we more connected, or less? Or, as Malinowski might ask, are we enjoying one another more, or less?

Deleted: When I first read Vetere et als workshop proposal entitled Phatic Technologies: Sustaining Sociability through Ubiquitous Computing, it seemed to me to be a critical evaluation of the shortcomings of phatic technologies when compared to old-fashioned face-to-face phatic communion.

Deleted: I was greatly surprised when, upon reading their upcoming chapter in Awareness Systems, I discovered that

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richer play between grandparents and grandchildren, as well as phatic tools that will encourage intimacy between loved ones. Not only are they lauding this type of technology, they are promoting their own products! Need more intimacy? Theres SynochroMate and Hug-over-a-distance, a couple of handheld devices designed to be the next best thing to being there (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 8). Want to bond with the grandkids? Theres an interactive touch-screen based display called Collage (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 9). Two social geographers in neighboring New Zealand were unable to control their excitement about digital sociality when they proclaimed that the machine and the human, in a cyborgian sense, meld to develop new and complex workings of space and the social which suggests mobile technologies are not as damaging to young people as many have suggested and calls for preventative approaches to this technology might need therefore to be rethought (Thompson and Cupples 95). Thompson and Cupples have interviewed numerous teenagers and found that a meaningful bond has been established between teens and their phones (101). Mobile phones have become an irreplaceable extension of teens, enabling social achievements heretofore unattainable. The bottom line for Thompson and Cupples is that teens and technology entangle themselves and each other in a hybrid network (104). We might as well accept it, they seem to be saying, and embrace the new digital sociality. Going one step further, Ralph Schroeder of the Oxford Internet Institute envisions a future where Shared Virtual Environments (SVEs) are an end-state a purely mediated relationship in which the user of the SVE technology experiences copresence with others in a fully immersive environment. In other words, he is asking us to consider a future in which users could live together (though not in the same
Deleted: , Deleted: ind

Y" "

physical location) completely immersed in a virtual world (Schroeder 438). Schroeder asserts that purely mediated inter-personal relations should not be regarded as inferior to face-to-face interaction; they should be viewed as simply different ways of being together (451). From that perspective, all phatic communion is equal; thus, all phatic technologies can be uncritically embraced. I realize that these proponents of phatic technologies see a wonderful opportunity for engendering new levels of phatic communion. They might even think of these products as making the best of the increasing disembeddedness of late modern society. But the evidence seems to point to the need at the very least for a critical evaluation of these new technologies and their influence upon our ability to communicate in ways other than phatic poking. Many enjoy the feeling of being always connected, but there are a variety of negative responses as well: resentment, resistance, and rebellion. In an interview about the use of cell phones, three male college students expressed their resentment about the demands being placed on them for social grooming. One picked up his cell phone and exclaimed Really, this has made my life hell! (Horstmanshof and Power 43). Another of the students did not replace his lost cell phone because he was concerned about losing control over his time and his own agenda (Horstmanshof and Power 41). I have personally witnessed my 13 year old son swimming in a virtual soup of phatic communion. Sitting in front of the computer screen with a cell phone in his left hand and a mouse in his right, he conducts one or two text messaging conversations while scanning his long list of friends on Facebook. Some are poking him, while others are greeting him through the chat application. He soaks in it, pleased with every ping and beep that tells him he is being thought of, even wanted. And I have to ask
Deleted: And Deleted: No doubt these two reflect the feelings of a growing number of people. Deleted: experience of phatic communion Comment [8]: Z%*"5'"*+)"=$52*"=+&*57" 7$((%257&*5$2A""B."5'"5*"7$((%257&*5$2"52"*+)" -&.3)."')2')A""@*"'))()/"&4$?)"*$"4)"*+)"-&33)." ')2')H"4%*"+).)"0$%"&==)&."*$"4)"/)9)29523"=+&*57" 7$((%257&*5$2H",+57+"+&'"2$"7$2*)2*:"">&2"0$%" 7-&.590A" Deleted: . Deleted: From the moment the first telephone was placed into somebodys home, the infiltration of phatic media into our private lives has been barreling forward. We have now reached a place where complete privacy is rarely experienced, which is causing a full range of responses.

Moved (insertion) [1]

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myself if this is good for him, if this connected presence is helping or hurting his relationships with his friends and family.
Deleted: Another concern is phatic communion becoming more and more mediated. When this mediation is a commodity that is ultimately controlled by business interests, then we are looking at the commodification of phatic communion. ... [2]

The late modern pursuit of the ultimate connected presence has led to one amazing technological development after another; but the question remains: are we more connected, or less? Or, as Malinowski might ask, are we enjoying one another more, or less?

Moved (insertion) [2]

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Works Cited
"

Friedman, Thomas L. "The Taxi Driver." The New York Times 1 November 2006. Horstmanshof, Louise and Mary R Power. "Mobile phones, SMS, and relationships." Australian Journal of Communication (2005): 33-52. Licoppe, Christian. ""Connected" presence: the emergence of a new repertoire for managing social relationships in a changing communication technoscape." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (2004): 135-156. Ling, Rich. New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008. Malinowski, Bronislaw. "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages." Richards, C.K. Ogden and I.A. The Meaning of Meaning. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1923. 296-336. Martins, Andrew and Pete Donohue. "Taxi and Limousine Commission mulls cell-phone blockers to keep cab drivers from using mobile phones." Daily News 14 April 2009: Local Section. Mazmanian, Melissa, Wanda J. Orlikowski and JoAnne Yates. "Crackberrys: Exploring the Social Implications of Ubiquitous Email Devices." EGOS. Bergen, 2006. 1-26. Miller, Vincent. "New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture." Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (2008): 387400. Paul Budde Communication. Report Information. 20 February 2008. 27 April 2009 <http://www.marketresearch.com/product>.

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Puente, Maria. "The popularity of Twitter has some relationships in a twist." USA Today 17 April 2009: Lifestyle. Reid, Donna and Fraser Reid. Insights into the Social and Psychological Effects of SMS Text Messaging. Research Paper. Plymouth: University of Plymouth, 2004. Schroeder, Ralph. "Being There Together and the Future of Connected Presence." Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments (2006): 438454. Thompson, Lee and Julie Cupples. "Seen and not heard? Text messaging and digital sociality." Social & Cultural Geography (2008): 95-108. Vetere, Frank, Jeremy Smith and Martin Gibbs. "Phatic Interactions: Being Aware and Feeling Connected." al, P. Markopoulos et. Awareness Systems. London: Springer-Verlag, 2009 (forthcoming). 1-12.
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Phatic Culture: Too Much of a Good Thing?

I recently received a message on my Facebook Wall from an unfamiliar name: hello, my graham. I just stopped in to say hello. When I clicked on the persons name, I could tell that we went to high school together because we had several high school classmates in common. When I finally figured out who he was, I returned a message on his Facebook Wall: hey Jessie, hows it going? I havent spoken to this gentleman in 30 years, and if I passed him on the street, I wouldnt know it, yet there we were trading small talk on the World Wide Web. Small talk first came into focus through the research of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. After working with the Melanesian tribes of Eastern New Guinea, Malinowski published an essay entitled The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages in 1923. In that essay, he coined the phrase phatic communion to refer to verbal exchanges that primarily serve a social purpose. He contended that phatic communion, what we today call small talk, is a speech act in which the ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words. Words used in phatic communion are not meant to transmit thought or stimulate reflection, but rather to break the silence and establish links of fellowship, which is consummated only by the breaking of bread and the communion of food. Malinowski asserted that this is languages primitive function a universal speech act common in savage and advanced societies alike. Though the term phatic communication was eventually preferred by linguists and anthropologists over Malinowskis phatic communion, communion specifically pointed to the relational rather than informational nature of small talk. When I greet the woman at the grocery store check-out line with Hows it going? I dont really want to know how she is doing;

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Deleted: Deleted: exchanging a greeting

... [1]

Deleted: This is the day we live in, a day in which small talk happens on a scale that dwarfs the pre-digital experience of running into acquaintances around the neighborhood, at social events, or in the grocery store. What, if anything, does this proliferation of venues for small talk mean? Does small talk even matter?

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I am simply acknowledging her as a fellow human being and eliminating the awkward silence. Per Malinowski, a lack of spoken social intercourse is universally seen as not only unfriendliness, but directly a bad character. Phatic communion goes beyond mere greetings. As Malinowski put it, after the first formula, there comes a flow of language, purposeless expressions of preference or aversion, accounts of irrelevant happenings, comments on what is perfectly obvious. Weve all commented to friends and strangers about how hot it is or how tired we are or how bad the traffic was; we have endless small talk expressions. In todays digital world, we not only have endless expressions, but we now have a multitude of channels through which this chit chat with friends, family, and acquaintances takes place. So much so that sociologist Vincent Miller describes our society today as a phatic culture. As he sees it, social media has led to a flattening of social bonds as we move into networked sociality (Wittel, 2001), and a similar flattening of communication in these networks towards the non-dialogic and noninformational. Flattening doesnt sound too good, unless its your stomach, but it seems especially undesirable in relationships and conversations. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter provide the ultimate forum for phatic communion that is largely motivated less by having something to say (i.e. communicating some kind of information), as it is by the obligation or encouragement to say something to maintain connections or audiences, to let ones network know that one is still there (Miller 393). Every day, there are fresh opportunities for mediated connection with new or old friends, and a social networkers number of friends is constantly expanding. But I cant help but wonder if the concept of friend isnt getting spread precariously thin. As Miller puts it:
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Close members of ones inner circle sit alongside strangers under the same banner in an endlessly expanding horizontal network, thus compressing social relations and eliminating context. The only context present is the egocentric nature of the network itself. In other words, friends as a whole create the context in which ones profile sits and from which identity emerges. (393) Social media entail a communicative practice more interested in making and keeping connections than in telling stories or engaging in vibrant dialogue, creating, in Millers term, phatic culture. In his book The Transformation of Intimacy, sociologist Anthony Giddens observes that late modern people live increasingly disembedded lives, meaning we are less connected to contexts of tradition, history, and space. This disembeddedness kindles the longing for the affirming presence of others. As Giddens puts it, late modern subjects gravitate toward relationships which engender trust through constant communication (qtd. in Miller 389). Technological advances have made these relationships possible through what Christian Licoppe calls connected presence. A professor in the sociology of technology, Liccope identifies a changing social landscape, where common practice is the connected management of relationships, in which the (physically) absent party renders himself or herself present by multiplying mediated communication gestures up to the point where copresent interactions and mediated communication seem woven in a seamless web (Licoppe 135). In other words, today it is possible for people to always be there for one another via various electronic devices (connected presence), thus filling in the gaps when they are not physically together (copresence). For instance, after waving goodbye as she watches a loved one drive away, the technologically adept person might send an affirming text message: love you, take
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care, drive safely. Her departing friend might then send out numerous electronic messages to a list of friends updating them on any interesting sights he takes in on the road trip home. So, even though they are apart, in one sense they are still very much together. What was space-age fantasy only twenty years ago has now become a reality. Todays young people are growing up in a world where constant phatic communion is the norm. Their lives are filled with online instant messaging, social networking through websites such as Facebook and MySpace, text messaging with cell phones, and Twitter. Twitter can serve as a powerful networking tool around serious subject matter. After all, it played a prominent role in recent political movements in the Middle East, Moldova, and the United States; however, for most users (especially teens) Twitter primarily serves a phatic purpose. A microblogging service started in 2006, Twitter is described by Miller as a kind of cross between social networking, blogging, and text messaging (396). Participants use their cell phones or the web to constantly post brief messages often devoid of substantive content that simply update their social network about what they are doing: going to the store, feeling overwhelmed with this paper,enjoying the beautiful day. The purpose of this kind of tweet is primarily phatic; participants simply want to stay connected to one another. Similarly, Facebook has a distinctly phatic feature called the poke. The poke is an inbuilt function that was created by Facebook without any specific purpose (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 9). The idea behind the poke is to simply let the recipient know you are there and thinking about him or her. Facebook also has a chat feature, which works much like other instant messaging applications. Again, the typical language used in a chat conversation is brief and shallow. Though it can be used to convey information, the most common function of online chatting is a phatic one.
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B" "

The most prevalent mediator of phatic communion is the mobile phone. Research indicates that cell phone calls are shorter and more frequent than landline conversations (Licoppe 142). Though these conversations sometimes serve the purpose of conveying information, quite often their use is purely phatic: Rather than constructing a shared experience by telling each other about small and big events during the day and the week, interlocutors exchange small expressive messages signaling a perception, a feeling, or an emotion, or requiring from the other person the same type of expressive message. In the case of a very close relationship, these calls tend to be as frequent as possible because the more that this presence maintained over a distance through mobile phones is continuous, the more reassuring it is in terms of the link. (Licoppe 147) Text messaging takes us one step further down the phatic path. Nokia boldly proclaims mobile messaging is the modern way to communicate. Its instant, location independent, and personal (qtd. In Reid and Reid 1). It is hard to dispute Nokias point. According to Budde.com, over 2 trillion messages were sent around the globe in 2008, with revenues estimated to be around $65-75 billion. Through text messaging, people maintain a contextless sense of immediacy with their closest friends. In research done with two groups of undergraduate students at Bond University in Australia, Lacohee, Wakeford, and Pearson found that text messages between students were low in information, but high in social grooming, i.e. letting someone know that you are thinking about them (qtd. in Horstmanshof and Power 47). Horstmanshof and Power also found that young people often fill empty time by sending out multiple text messages, counting on the likelihood that at least one of the hooks they have put in the water will get a bite (46).
Deleted: to

C" "

Are we more connected, or less? In 2008, sociologist Richard Ling published a book entitled New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion. He asserts that mobile communication enhances the connection between a participant and her friends and family, but this is sometimes at the expense of interaction with those who are in the same room (Ling 3). In other words, a young lady who is constantly exchanging text messages with her boyfriend while out with the girls might be doing a good job at maintaining her connection with her boyfriend, but she is robbing her girlfriends of her full attention in the process. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece, Thomas Friedman reflects on a recent trip to Paris. He laments that he never actually talked with the driver who picked him up at the airport and taxied him to his hotel room (they were together for one hour). The driver was on his cell phone the whole time, while he was on his laptop and had his iPod in his ears. Friedman wonders if the journalistic tradition of getting good quotes from local taxi drivers is waning, then worries that technology is dividing us as much as uniting us. This certainly appears to be the case with taxi drivers, as New York City is currently considering implementing a system that will disable cell phone use in the front seat of taxis. Apparently, their constant chattering on cell phones is a safety concern and a nuisance to passengers. One cabbie responded that they should put cell-phone blockers in the back seat instead (Martins and Donohue). Divided indeed. Along this line of thought, Horstmanshof and Power note: In the past, a journey, particularly a journey to the other side of the world, would be seen as an opportunity to take another perspective, and to be influenced by

D" "

new contacts and to make new friends. However, if, via the mobile phone and inexpensively through SMS, people are able to remain in constant contact with friends already known, travel may not be so broadening. (44) Indeed, the capacity for continuous mediated interaction has not only begun to blur the boundaries between absence and presence (Licoppe 136), but Grant & Keisler and Green have also identified a collapsing of distinctions between private and public spheres of life (qtd. in Mazmanian, Orlikowski and Yates 4). Green identifies this blurring as a kind of spatial and temporal boundary rearrangement (Green, 2002, p. 287), finding that the use of cell phones encourages the embedding of public activities and responsibilities into private time and space (e.g., the home), as well as the integration of private commitments and relationships into the public sphere this potentially fragments both public and private interactions, collapsing each into the other. (qtd. in Mazmanian, Orlikowski and Yates 4) A fifth grade teacher, for example, recently told me about a colleague who had cancelled a field trip due to inclement weather. The weather wasnt really that bad, she said, but the teacher commented that parents are not much help anymore because they just stand around talking or texting on their cell phones. In each of these examples, connected presence supersedes copresence; mediated communication prevails over face-to-face interaction; virtual reality wins out over personal relationship.

Where do we go from here? In a chapter in a forthcoming book entitled Awareness Systems, Frank Vetere examines emerging phatic technologies and applauds how they sustain sociability. Numerous studies have chronicled the increased flow of information through ubiquitous
Deleted: forthcoming Deleted: presents

E" "

computing, but only recently have researchers considered the significance of new media technology as a channel for phatic communion. Vetere and his colleagues at the University of Melbourne, Australia, are among a growing number of specialists from a wide variety of disciplines who are enthusiastically pointing the way toward achieving a feeling of ongoing connectedness via technology (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 5). The authors mention wasting time with a loved one as a valuable expression of caring. They also point to the improvement in health that aged people experience when they interact with their grandchildren. More than a simple phone call, Vetere et al say that studies have shown that a more personal, richer context, such as play activity, is required. However, Vetere et al are uncritical proponents of emerging phatic technology that promises to virtually provide personal, richer play between grandparents and grandchildren, as well as phatic tools that will encourage intimacy between loved ones. Not only are they lauding this type of technology, they are promoting their own products! Need more intimacy? Theres SynochroMate and Hugover-a-distance, a couple of handheld devices designed to be the next best thing to being there (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 8). Want to bond with the grandkids? Theres an interactive touch-screen based display called Collage (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 9). Two social geographers in neighboring New Zealand were unable to control their excitement about digital sociality when they proclaimed that the machine and the human, in a cyborgian sense, meld to develop new and complex workings of space and the social which suggests mobile technologies are not as damaging to young people as many have suggested and calls for preventative approaches to this technology might need therefore to be rethought (Thompson and Cupples 95). Thompson and Cupples interviewed numerous teenagers and found that a meaningful bond has been
Deleted: the value of

F" "

established between teens and their phones (101). Mobile phones have become an irreplaceable extension of teens, enabling social achievements heretofore unattainable. The bottom line for Thompson and Cupples is that teens and technology entangle themselves and each other in a hybrid network (104). We might as well accept it, they seem to be saying, and embrace the new digital sociality. Going one step further, Ralph Schroeder of the Oxford Internet Institute envisions a future where Shared Virtual Environments (SVEs) are an end-state a purely mediated relationship in which the user of the SVE technology experiences copresence with others in a fully immersive environment. In other words, he is asking us to consider a future in which users could live together (though not in the same physical location) completely immersed in a virtual world (Schroeder 438). Schroeder asserts that purely mediated inter-personal relations should not be regarded as inferior to face-to-face interaction; they should be viewed as simply different ways of being together (451). From that perspective, all phatic communion is equal; thus, all phatic technologies can be uncritically embraced. I realize that these proponents of phatic technologies see a wonderful opportunity for engendering new levels of phatic communion. They might even think of these products as mitigating the disembeddedness of late modern society. But the evidence seems to point to the need at the very least for a critical evaluation of these new technologies and the quality of phatic communion they implement. Many enjoy the feeling of being always connected, but there are a variety of negative responses as well: resentment, resistance, and rebellion. In an interview about the use of cell phones, three male college students expressed their resentment about the demands being placed on them for social grooming. One picked up his cell phone and exclaimed Really, this

!G" "

has made my life hell! (Horstmanshof and Power 43). Another of the students did not replace his lost cell phone because he was concerned about losing control over his time and his own agenda (Horstmanshof and Power 41). Thomas Friedman tells of a friend who didnt replace his stolen cell phone. When Friedman asked him why, he said the phone was constantly breaking his concentration. As a matter of fact, the friend quipped, the first thing I do every morning is thank the thief and wish him a long life. I have personally witnessed my 13 year old son swimming in a virtual soup of digital phatic communion. Sitting in front of the computer screen with a cell phone in his left hand and a mouse in his right, he conducts one or two text messaging conversations while scanning his long list of friends on Facebook. Some are poking him, while others are greeting him through the chat application. He soaks in it, pleased with every ping and beep that tells him he is being thought of, even wanted. And I have to ask myself if this is good for him, if this connected presence is helping or hurting his relationships with his friends and family. The late modern pursuit of the ultimate connected presence has led to one amazing technological development after another; but the question remains: are we more connected, or less? Or, as Malinowski might ask, are we enjoying one another more, or less?
Deleted:

Works Cited
"

Friedman, Thomas L. "The Taxi Driver." The New York Times 1 November 2006. Horstmanshof, Louise and Mary R Power. "Mobile phones, SMS, and relationships." Australian Journal of Communication (2005): 33-52.

!!" "

Licoppe, Christian. ""Connected" presence: the emergence of a new repertoire for managing social relationships in a changing communication technoscape." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (2004): 135-156. Ling, Rich. New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008. Malinowski, Bronislaw. "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages." Richards, C.K. Ogden and I.A. The Meaning of Meaning. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1923. 296-336. Martins, Andrew and Pete Donohue. "Taxi and Limousine Commission mulls cell-phone blockers to keep cab drivers from using mobile phones." Daily News 14 April 2009: Local Section. Mazmanian, Melissa, Wanda J. Orlikowski and JoAnne Yates. "Crackberrys: Exploring the Social Implications of Ubiquitous Email Devices." EGOS. Bergen, 2006. 1-26. Miller, Vincent. "New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture." Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (2008): 387400. Paul Budde Communication. Report Information. 20 February 2008. 27 April 2009 <http://www.marketresearch.com/product>. Puente, Maria. "The popularity of Twitter has some relationships in a twist." USA Today 17 April 2009: Lifestyle. Reid, Donna and Fraser Reid. Insights into the Social and Psychological Effects of SMS Text Messaging. Research Paper. Plymouth: University of Plymouth, 2004. Schroeder, Ralph. "Being There Together and the Future of Connected Presence." Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments (2006): 438454.

!#" "

Thompson, Lee and Julie Cupples. "Seen and not heard? Text messaging and digital sociality." Social & Cultural Geography (2008): 95-108. Vetere, Frank, Jeremy Smith and Martin Gibbs. "Phatic Interactions: Being Aware and Feeling Connected." al, P. Markopoulos et. Awareness Systems. London: Springer-Verlag, 2009 (forthcoming). 1-12.
"

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Greg Graham

Phatic Culture

I recently received a message on my Facebook Wall from an unfamiliar name: hello, my graham. I just stopped in to say hello. When I clicked on the persons name, I could tell that we went to high school together because we had several high school classmates in common. When I finally figured out who he was, I returned a message on his Facebook Wall: hey Jessie, hows it going? I havent spoken to this gentleman in thirty years, and if I passed him on the street, I wouldnt know it, yet there we were, trading small talk on the World Wide Web. Small talk first came into focus through the research of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. After working with the Melanesian tribes of Eastern New Guinea, Malinowski published an essay entitled The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages in 1923. In that essay, he coined the phrase phatic communion to refer to verbal exchanges that primarily serve a social purpose. He contended that phatic communion, what we today call small talk, is a speech act in which the ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words. Words used in phatic communion are not meant to transmit thought or stimulate reflection, but rather to break the silence and establish links of fellowship, which is consummated only by the breaking of bread and the communion of food. Malinowski asserted that this is languages primitive functiona universal speech act common

in savage and advanced societies alike. Though the term phatic communication was eventually preferred by linguists and anthropologists over Malinowskis phatic communion, communion specifically pointed to the relational rather than informational nature of small talk. When I greet the woman at the grocery store check-out line with Hows it going? I dont really want to know how she is doing; I am simply acknowledging her as a fellow human being and eliminating the awkward silence. Per Malinowski, a lack of spoken social intercourse is universally seen as not only unfriendliness, but directly a bad character. Phatic communion goes beyond mere greetings. As Malinowski put it, after the first formula, there comes a flow of language, purposeless expressions of preference or aversion, accounts of irrelevant happenings, comments on what is perfectly obvious (314). Weve all commented to friends and strangers about how hot it is or how tired we are or how bad the traffic was; we have endless small talk expressions. In todays digital world, we not only have endless expressions, but we now have a multitude of channels through which this chitchat with friends, family, and acquaintances takes place. In fact, sociologist Vincent Miller describes our society today as a phatic culture. As he sees it, social media have led to a flattening of social bonds as we move into networked sociality (Wittel, 2001), and a similar flattening of communication in these networks towards the non-dialogic and noninformational. Flattening doesnt sound too good, unless its your stomach, but it seems especially undesirable in relationships and conversations.

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter provide the ultimate forum for phatic communion that is largely motivated less by having something to say (i.e. communicating some kind of information), than it is by the obligation or encouragement to say something to maintain connections or audiences, to let ones network know that one is still there (Miller 393). Every day there are fresh opportunities for mediated connection with new or old friends, and a social networkers number of friends is constantly expanding. But I cant help wondering if the concept of friend isnt getting spread precariously thin. As Miller puts it: Close members of ones inner circle sit alongside strangers under the same banner in an endlessly expanding horizontal network, thus compressing social relations and eliminating context. The only context present is the egocentric nature of the network itself. In other words, friends as a whole create the context in which ones profile sits and from which identity emerges (393). Social media entail a communicative practice more interested in making and keeping connections than in telling stories or engaging in vibrant dialogue, creating, in Millers term, phatic culture. In his book The Transformation of Intimacy, sociologist Anthony Giddens observes that late modern people live increasingly disembedded lives, meaning we are less connected to contexts of tradition, history, and space. This disembeddedness kindles the longing for the

114
Greg Graham

Phatic Culture

affirming presence of others. As Giddens puts it, late modern subjects gravitate toward relationships which engender trust through constant communication (qtd. in Miller 389). Technological advances have made these relationships possible through what Christian Licoppe calls connected presence. A professor in the sociology of technology, Liccope identifies a changing social landscape, where common practice is the connected management of relationships, in which the (physically) absent party renders himself or herself present by multiplying mediated communication gestures up to the point where co present interactions and mediated communication seem woven in a seamless web (Licoppe 135). In other words, today it is possible for people to always be there for one another via various electronic devices (connected presence), thus filling in the gaps when they are not physically together (co presence). For instance, after waving goodbye as she watches a loved one drive away, the technologically adept person might send an affirming text message: love you, take care, drive safely. Her departing friend might then send out numerous electronic messages to a list of friends updating them on any interesting sights he takes in on the road trip home. So, even though they are apart, in one sense they are still very much together. What was space-age fantasy only twenty years ago has now become a reality. Todays young people are growing up in a world where constant phatic communion is the norm. Their lives are filled with online instant messaging, social networking through websites such as Facebook and MySpace, text messaging with cell phones, and Twitter. Twitter

can serve as a powerful networking tool around serious subject matter. After all, it played a prominent role in recent political movements in the Middle East, Moldova, and the United States. However, for most users (especially teens), Twitter primarily serves a phatic purpose. A microblogging service started in 2006, Twitter is described by Miller as a kind of cross between social networking, blogging, and text messaging (New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture 396). Participants use their cell phones or the web to constantly post brief messagesoften devoid of substantive contentthat simply update their social network about what they are doing: going to the store, feeling overwhelmed with this paper, enjoying the beautiful day. The purpose of this kind of tweet is primarily phatic; participants simply want to stay connected to one another. Similarly, Facebook has a distinctly phatic feature called the poke. The poke is an inbuilt function that was created by Facebook without any specific purpose (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 9). The idea behind the poke is to simply let the recipient know you are there and thinking about him or her. Facebook also has a chat feature, which works much like other instant messaging applications. Again, the typical language used in a chat conversation is brief and shallow. Though it can be used to convey information, the most common function of online chatting is a phatic one. The most prevalent mediator of phatic communion is the mobile phone. Research indicates that cell phone calls are shorter and more frequent than landline conversations (Licoppe 142). Though these conversations sometimes serve the purpose of

115
Greg Graham

Phatic Culture

conveying information, quite often their use is purely phatic: Rather than constructing a shared experience by telling each other about small and big events during the day and the week, interlocutors exchange small expressive messages signaling a perception, a feeling, or an emotion, or requiring from the other person the same type of expressive message. In the case of a very close relationship, these calls tend to be as frequent as possible because the more that this presence, maintained over a distance through mobile phones, is continuous, the more reassuring it is in terms of the link (Licoppe 147). Text messaging takes us one step further down the phatic path. Nokia boldly proclaims mobile messaging is the modern way to communicate. Its instant, location independent, and personal (qtd. In Reid and Reid 1). It is hard to dispute Nokias point. Through text messaging, people maintain a contextless sense of immediacy with their closest friends. In research done with two groups of undergraduate students at Bond University in Australia, Lacohee, Wakeford, and Pearson found that text messages between students were low in information, but high in social grooming, i.e. letting someone know that you are thinking about them (qtd. in Horstmanshof and Power 47). Horstmanshof and Power also found that young people often fill empty time by sending out multiple text messages, counting on the likelihood that at least one of the hooks they have put in the water will get a bite (Mobile phones, SMS, and relationships 46). Are we more connected, or less?

In 2008, sociologist Richard Ling published a book entitled New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion. He asserts that mobile communication enhances the connection between a participant and her friends and family, but this is sometimes at the expense of interaction with those who are in the same room (Ling 3). In other words, a young lady who is constantly exchanging text messages with her boyfriend while out with the girls might be doing a good job at maintaining her connection with her boyfriend, but she is robbing her girlfriends of her full attention in the process. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece, Thomas Friedman reflects on a recent trip to Paris. He laments that he never actually talked with the driver who picked him up at the airport and taxied him to his hotel room (they were together for one hour). The driver was on his cell phone the whole time, while he was on his laptop and had his iPod in his ears. Friedman wonders if the journalistic tradition of getting good quotes from local taxi drivers is waning, then worries that technology is dividing us as much as uniting us. This certainly appears to be the case with taxi drivers, as New York City is currently considering implementing a system that will disable cell phone use in the front seat of taxis. Apparently, their constant chattering on cell phones is a safety concern and a nuisance to passengers. One cabbie responded that they should put cell phone blockers in the back seat instead (Martins and Donohue). Divided indeed. Along this line of thought, Horstmanshof and Power note: In the past, a journey, particularly a journey to the other side of the world,

116
Greg Graham

Phatic Culture

would be seen as an opportunity to take another perspective, and to be influenced by new contacts and to make new friends. However, if, via the mobile phone and inexpensively through SMS, people are able to remain in constant contact with friends already known, travel may not be so broadening (Mobile phones, SMS, and relationships 44). Indeed, the capacity for continuous mediated interaction has not only begun to blur the boundaries between absence and presence (Licoppe 136), but Grant & Keisler and Green have also identified a collapsing of distinctions between private and public spheres of life (qtd. in Mazmanian, Orlikowski and Yates 4). Green identifies this blurring as a kind of spatial and temporal boundary rearrangement (Green, 2002, p. 287), finding that the use of cell phones encourages the embedding of public activities and responsibilities into private time and space (e.g., the home), as well as the integration of private commitments and relationships into the public sphere this potentially fragments both public and private interactions, collapsing each into the other (qtd. in Mazmanian, Orlikowski and Yates 4). A fifth grade teacher, for example, recently told me about a colleague who had cancelled a field trip due to inclement weather. The weather wasnt really that bad, she said, but the teacher commented that parents are not much help anymore because they just stand around talking or texting on their cell phones. In each of these examples, connected presence supersedes co presence; mediated communication prevails over face-to-face interaction;

virtual reality wins out over personal relationship. Where do we go from here? In a chapter in a forthcoming book entitled Awareness Systems, Frank Vetere examines emerging phatic technologies and applauds how they sustain sociability. Numerous studies have chronicled the increased flow of information through ubiquitous computing, but only recently have researchers considered the significance of new media technology as a channel for phatic communion. Vetere and his colleagues at the University of Melbourne, Australia, are among a growing number of specialists from a wide variety of disciplines who are enthusiastically pointing the way toward achieving a feeling of ongoing connectedness via technology (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 5). The authors mention wasting time with a loved one as a valuable expression of caring. They also point to the improvement in health that aged people experience when they interact with their grandchildren. More than a simple phone call, Vetere et al. say that studies have shown that a more personal, richer context, such as play activity, is required (6). However, Vetere et al. are uncritical proponents of emerging phatic technology that promises to virtually provide personal, richer play between grandparents and grandchildren, as well as phatic tools that will encourage intimacy between loved ones. Not only are they lauding this type of technology, they are promoting their own products! Need more intimacy? Theres SynochroMate and Hug-over-a-distance, a couple of handheld devices designed to be the next best thing

117
Greg Graham

Phatic Culture

to being there (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 8). Want to bond with the grandkids? Theres an interactive touch-screen based display called Collage (Vetere, Smith and Gibbs 9). Two social geographers in neighboring New Zealand were unable to control their excitement about digital sociality when they proclaimed that the machine and the human, in a cyborgian sense, meld to develop new and complex workings of space and the social which suggests mobile technologies are not as damaging to young people as many have suggested and calls for preventative approaches to this technology might need therefore to be rethought (Thompson and Cupples 95). Thompson and Cupples interviewed numerous teenagers and found that a meaningful bond has been established between teens and their phones (101). Mobile phones have become an irreplaceable extension of teens, enabling social achievements heretofore unattainable. The bottom line for Thompson and Cupples is that teens and technology entangle themselves and each other in a hybrid network (104). We might as well accept it, they seem to be saying, and embrace the new digital sociality. Going one step further, Ralph Schroeder of the Oxford Internet Institute envisions a future where Shared Virtual Environments (SVEs) are an end-statea purely mediated relationship in which the user of the SVE technology experiences co presence with others in a fully immersive environment. In other words, he is asking us to consider a future in which users could live together (though not in the same physical location) completely

immersed in a virtual world (Schroeder 438). Schroeder asserts that purely mediated inter-personal relations should not be regarded as inferior to face-to-face interaction; they should be viewed as simply different ways of being together (451). From that perspective, all phatic communion is equal; thus, all phatic technologies can be uncritically embraced. I realize that these proponents of phatic technologies see a wonderful opportunity for engendering new levels of phatic communion. They might even think of these products as mitigating the disembeddedness of late modern society. But the evidence seems to point to the need at the very leastfor a critical evaluation of these new technologies and the quality of phatic communion they implement. Many enjoy the feeling of being always connected, but there are a variety of negative responses as well: resentment, resistance, and rebellion. In an interview about the use of cell phones, three male college students expressed their resentment about the demands being placed on them for social grooming. One picked up his cell phone and exclaimed Really, this has made my life hell! (Horstmanshof and Power 43). Another of the students did not replace his lost cell phone because he was concerned about losing control over his time and his own agenda (Horstmanshof and Power 41). Thomas Friedman tells of a friend who didnt replace his stolen cell phone. When Friedman asked him why, he said the phone was constantly breaking his concentration. As a matter of fact, the friend quipped, the first thing I do every

118
Greg Graham

Phatic Culture

morning is thank the thief and wish him a long life (Friedman). I have personally witnessed my thirteenyear-old son swimming in a virtual soup of digital phatic communion. Sitting in front of the computer screen with a cell phone in his left hand and a mouse in his right, he conducts one or two text messaging conversations while scanning his long list of friends on Facebook. Some are poking him, while others are greeting him through the chat application. He soaks in it, pleased with every ping and beep that tells him he is being thought of, even wanted. And I have to ask myself if this is good for him, if this connected presence is helping or hurting his relationships with his friends and family. The late modern pursuit of the ultimate connected presence has led to one amazing technological development after another; but the question remains: are we more connected, or less? Or, as Malinowski might ask, are we enjoying one another more, or less?

Licoppe, Christian. Connected presence: the emergence of a new repertoire for managing social relationships in a changing communication technoscape. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (2004): 135156. Ling, Rich. New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008. Malinowski, Bronislaw. The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages. Richards, C.K. Ogden and I.A. The Meaning of Meaning. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1923. 296336. Martins, Andrew and Pete Donohue. Taxi and Limousine Commission mulls cellphone blockers to keep cab drivers from using mobile phones. Daily News 14 April 2009: Local Section. Mazmanian, Melissa, Wanda J. Orlikowski and JoAnne Yates. Crackberrys: Exploring the Social Implications of Ubiquitous Email Devices. EGOS. Bergen, 2006: 126. Miller, Vincent. New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (2008): 387400. Paul Budde Communication. Report Information. 20 February 2008. 27 April 2009 <http://www.marketresearch.com/ product>.

Phatic Culture

Works Cited
Friedman, Thomas L. The Taxi Driver. The New York Times 1 November 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/ opinion/01friedman.html. Horstmanshof, Louise and Mary R Power. Mobile phones, SMS, and relationships. Australian Journal of Communication (2005): 3352.

119
Greg Graham

Puente, Maria. The popularity of Twitter has some relationships in a twist. USA Today 17 April 2009: Lifestyle. Reid, Donna and Fraser Reid. Insights into the Social and Psychological Effects of SMS Text Messaging. Research Paper. Plymouth: University of Plymouth, 2004. Schroeder, Ralph. Being There Together and the Future of Connected Presence. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments (2006): 438454. Thompson, Lee and Julie Cupples. Seen and not heard? Text messaging and digital sociality. Social & Cultural Geography (2008): 95108. Vetere, Frank, Jeremy Smith and Martin Gibbs. Phatic Interactions: Being Aware and Feeling Connected. al, P. Markopoulos et. Awareness Systems. London: SpringerVerlag, 2009 (forthcoming). 112.

120
Greg Graham

Phatic Culture