Mobile kommunikation: Zur kulturbedeutung des "handy"

Within the past few years the mobile phone -in Germany called "handy" - has been an overwhelming success. The main interest concerning the "handy" is nor in its properties as a technological device, but in it as an artefact that - pars pro tote - represents some aspects of fundamental cultural change. By making it possible to reach anybody at any time, the mobile phone not only facilitates communication with distant people or people who are involved in some outdoor activity - on the beach, on a mountain, in the desert -, it also shifts the boundaries between the private and the public spheres, between personal and professional communication. The mobile phone is an object of material culture that combines three basic elements of modem societies: communication, mobility, and individuality. It is an artefact which incorporates social practices and cultural knowledge, a "prosthetic" object merging body and culture. The cultural implementation of the mobile phone raises a number of questions concerning culture and communication. This paper focuses on two problems. First: How does the mobile phone enhance options of communication, and what are the specific problems resulting from it? And second: What communicative problems arise due to the interference of mobile communication with face-fo-face-communication in public space, and what new rules of public communication are institutionalised by discursive and practical negotiations?.