Sounding Off

Networked communications accord the voice renewed spatial significance. How does the mobile phone influence the use and design of spaces? The conventions for modulating the voice in face-to-face exchanges are well established. But in the case of mobile communications the voice may be raised to abnormal levels. The raised voice overcomes ambient interference, and spatial distance. The voice is also the quintessential means of issuing a summons, a call, “come here,” and hence invoking action at a distance, across space. Rousseau, one of the earliest theorists of communication, links voice and space in this way, as amplified in the case of children brought up in the countryside.