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Where Are You? : An Ontology of the Cell Phone / Maurizio Ferraris.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextSeries: CommonalitiesPublisher: New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2014]Copyright date: ©2014Description: 1 online resource (248 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780823256167
  • 9780823256198
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 303.4833 23
LOC classification:
  • HE9713 .F477 2014eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- FOREWORD: TRUTH AND THE MOBILE PHONE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- TRANSLATOR’S NOTE -- INTRODUCTION: WHERE ARE YOU? -- Part I. PERÌ MAIL: THE PHARAOH’S MOBILE PHONE -- 1. SPEAKING -- 2. WRITING -- 3. RECORDING -- 4. CONSTRUCTING -- THE BOTTLE IMP -- Part II. SOCIAL OBJECTS: REALISM AND TEXTUALISM -- 5. STRONG REALISM -- 6. STRONG TEXTUALISM -- 7. WEAK REALISM -- 8. WEAK TEXTUALISM -- EPILOGUE -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- INDEX
Summary: This book sheds light on the most philosophically interesting of contemporary objects: the cell phone. “Where are you?”—a question asked over cell phones myriad times each day—is arguably the most philosophical question of our age, given the transformation of presence the cell phone has wrought in contemporary social life and public space.Throughout all public spaces, cell phones are now a ubiquitous prosthesis of what Descartes and Hegel once considered the absolute tool: the hand. Their power comes in part from their ability to move about with us—they are like a computer, but we can carry them with us at all times—in part from what they attach to us (and how), as all that computational and connective power becomes both handy and hand-sized.Quite surprisingly, despite their name, one might argue, as Ferraris does, that cell phones are not really all that good for sound and speaking. Instead, the main philosophical point of this book is that mobile phones have come into their own as writing machines—they function best for text messages, e-mail, and archives of allkinds. Their philosophical urgency lies in the manner in which they carry us from the effects of voice over into reliance upon the written traces that are, Ferraris argues, the basic stuff of human culture.Ontology is the study of what there is, and what there is in our age is a huge network of documents, papers, and texts of all kinds. Social reality is not constructed by collective intentionality; rather, it is made up of inscribed acts. As Derrida already prophesized, our world revolves around writing. Cell phones have attached writing to our fingers and dragged it into public spaces in a new way. This is why, with their power to obliterate or morph presence and replace voice with writing, the cell phone is such a philosophically interesting object.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780823256198

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- FOREWORD: TRUTH AND THE MOBILE PHONE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- TRANSLATOR’S NOTE -- INTRODUCTION: WHERE ARE YOU? -- Part I. PERÌ MAIL: THE PHARAOH’S MOBILE PHONE -- 1. SPEAKING -- 2. WRITING -- 3. RECORDING -- 4. CONSTRUCTING -- THE BOTTLE IMP -- Part II. SOCIAL OBJECTS: REALISM AND TEXTUALISM -- 5. STRONG REALISM -- 6. STRONG TEXTUALISM -- 7. WEAK REALISM -- 8. WEAK TEXTUALISM -- EPILOGUE -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- INDEX

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

This book sheds light on the most philosophically interesting of contemporary objects: the cell phone. “Where are you?”—a question asked over cell phones myriad times each day—is arguably the most philosophical question of our age, given the transformation of presence the cell phone has wrought in contemporary social life and public space.Throughout all public spaces, cell phones are now a ubiquitous prosthesis of what Descartes and Hegel once considered the absolute tool: the hand. Their power comes in part from their ability to move about with us—they are like a computer, but we can carry them with us at all times—in part from what they attach to us (and how), as all that computational and connective power becomes both handy and hand-sized.Quite surprisingly, despite their name, one might argue, as Ferraris does, that cell phones are not really all that good for sound and speaking. Instead, the main philosophical point of this book is that mobile phones have come into their own as writing machines—they function best for text messages, e-mail, and archives of allkinds. Their philosophical urgency lies in the manner in which they carry us from the effects of voice over into reliance upon the written traces that are, Ferraris argues, the basic stuff of human culture.Ontology is the study of what there is, and what there is in our age is a huge network of documents, papers, and texts of all kinds. Social reality is not constructed by collective intentionality; rather, it is made up of inscribed acts. As Derrida already prophesized, our world revolves around writing. Cell phones have attached writing to our fingers and dragged it into public spaces in a new way. This is why, with their power to obliterate or morph presence and replace voice with writing, the cell phone is such a philosophically interesting object.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)