Chapter 5 - The Terrible Lightness of Being Mobile: Cell Phone and the Dislocation of Home

Summary

Mobile Work and Play: The Uncanny Feeling of Being Everywhere

In 2007 Sprint featured a range of commercials that envisioned the successful businessman in terms of access to fast and reliable mobile networks. In one commercial, Dan Hesse, the CEO of the company, is found working effortlessly in a taxicab as he travels around New York City. Drawing a parallel between the life of a CEO and the average worker, the bottom line expressed in the ad is that success in the workplace depends on having access to Sprint's ultrafast and efficient mobile devices and networks. Whereas for the “mobile deficient” worker, taking a taxicab represents an inefficient use of time and space, as one remains outside the spaces of work, for the Sprint customer, every space, even a trip around the city, forms a potential site of work. As the commercial explains, because the new mobile worker is backed by a 3G cell phone network and fast mobile Internet, success is ensured, as there is now no reason not to be working. In another commercial, Sprint continues its masculinist portrayal of mobile work, referring to the problem of keeping a constant network connection as “connectile dysfunction.” Like the taxicab commercial, the setting for this advertisement involves an airport lounge that is filled with a group of gloomy men who become depressed because they are disconnected from their place of work.