whether or not you agree with the author & why...
If Romeo and Juliet Had Cell Phones
Misty Harris
NEWS ARTICLE
1 Romeo and Juliet are often cited as a tragedy that could have been averted with one cell phone call. But smug as we are in our technology, a Canadian sociologist says the Shakespearean tale was actually ahead of its time, with the star-crossed lovers’ romance acting as an allegory for the social network revolution.
2 In a new research paper, Barry Wellman points to Romeo and Juliet as one of the earliest examples of the shift from group-bound societies to networked individuals—a modern phenomenon that, with the saturation of mobile phones, has reinvented the way people interact.
3“The big thing about the social network revolution is that instead of living in tightly knit groups, people are crossing boundaries and connecting as individuals—and that’s basically the story of Romeo and Juliet,” said Wellman, professor of sociology and information at the University of Toronto.
4The problem with being ahead of your time, of course, is that technology needs to catch up.
5Wellman’s paper, published in the January issue of the journal Mobile Media & Communication, looks at the probable ways in which the couple’s love story would’ve changed had they had access to today’s tools—an exercise that simultaneously sheds light on mobile devices’ effect on modern life.
6“The big problems were that they couldn’t coordinate with each other, they couldn’t find each other, and they had a lot of miscommunication about each other,” said Wellman, co-author of Networked: The New Social Operating System. “Today, they would literally have each other in their pockets all the time. I know students who send one another secret (cell phone) vibrations just to let the other person know, ‘I’m thinking of you.”
7 Such micro-communication is enabled by the slim-down of mobile phones, from roughly 1 kilogram to about 140 grams1 (“they would easily fit into bodices and codpieces,”2 Wellman observes).
8Empowered by this technology, Romeo and Juliet likely would’ve used location-based apps to track each other’s whereabouts, text messaging to keep their communication private, and video chats to keep the spark alive.
9 In addition, Wellman speculates that their exchanges would’ve been subject to less scrutiny, as mobile phones eliminate the need to connect through a family gatekeeper.
10“In the past, everyone in the house would know when you got a phone call. Now, you can do this stuff more or less in private,” said Wellman, who adds that this shift is also evident in the ways people use their cell phones.
11“If you were riding on public transit 10 years ago, you’d hear people shouting at each other on their mobile phones. Now, they’re murmuring or they’re texting.”
12 In fact, Canadians send more than 274 million texts every day. And if Juliet “had kept insecurely texting Romeo,” Wellman believes the resulting social overload would have driven him away.
13 The sociologist ultimately concludes that the consequences of technology for Verona’s lovers would be the same as they are for modern society: mixed.
14“They’d still be alive,” said Wellman. “But they probably would’ve gotten tired of each other really quickly.”
