Barry Wellmann and "The Rise of Personalized Networking"
Wellmann focuses his piece “The Rise of Networked Individualism” on the networks of communication through use of personalized media technology such as the phone in order to make a case for increasing individualism. He uses the concepts of place and person and their relation to each other as logic behind his claim.
He begins his paper by explaining the difference between person-to-place communication and person-to-person communication. Person-to-place communication was when telephones were connected to walls, and to be contacted the communication had to go from a place on a wall to another household where the receiver of such communication would reside. Now we have shifted to a new paradigm of person-to-person communication. This was brought about by the increased use of mobile phones, which are personally attached to individuals. In modern society and the popular use of smartphones, people communicate with one another directly. In these new scenarios that are increasingly prevalent in our society, Wellmann argues that because of the lack of context involved in the communication between individuals there is a rise of a more personal form of communication. Context ties the person to an environment, or a situation. Without the context, Wellman says that there is liberation. There is liberation that comes from communication without a place and a group to communication to mobile phones. Wellmann also analyzes the internet as a network and its effects on communication. The internet for him is defined as more person-based than place-based, what with the access to the internet with personal computer innovations and the inherent network capabilities of the internet itself. The internet according to Wellman is much a much more immersive medium of communication of information than older mediums. TV, telephones, and radio are all old mediums which accesses less senses than when someone is using the internet. It is more immersive because it is the first time the kinesthetic sense is paired with visual and oratory senses. Because of this, people physically around the ser has to compete for their attention, making the user of the internet a more independent, experiencing something personal and immersive.