Connectivity and Poverty  

Metamedia has a post on Bruce Sterling's recent SXSW talk, where he held forth the surprising level of connectivity the world's poor have obtained via the mobile phones (“poor folk love their cellphones!”) - Connectivity and Poverty.

I'd have to say Sterling misses the bullseye on this one. In fact, he has it sort of backwards.

The real issue isn't connectivity per se, but control of access and interruption.

Everyone is being connected, even the poor, by cell phones as they become cheap commodities; but the rich were the first to adopt them in the 80s and early 90s when there were expensive (e.g. the scene from film Wall Street (1984) with Gekko using walkie-talkie-esque cell phone on the beach).

They will not give them up or ever be unconnected.

However. the difference is who can control being unconnected as they choose to: who can control and to what extent they can be unconnected and from whom.

This is not new -- those is power have always known the importance of the power to control access to themselves. The more power one has, the more powerful one's gatekeepers must be. Kings and courts developed vast rituals to control access to power. Corporate royalty do the same. My boss can interrupt me at any time, but I cannot interrupt my boss. My boss goes on vacation, and the only one who can reach them is their boss. But they can reach us anytime. It's hierarchical.

In fact, rather than a simple dichotomy of rich/poor connectivity, more fruitful would be to apply an analysis such as Paul Fussell's Class: A Guide Through the American Status System.

Fussell calls the top of the class system "Top Out of Sight," and they are out of sight because they are able to control access to themselves most thoroughly. The lowest class (e.g. the homeless) is likewise "Bottom Out of Sight," because there is no point in connecting to them as they don't serve any purpose as part of the labor force.

I'll bet that connectivity is stratified along a continuum according to class, where

* we have to be connected to respond to the commands of those above us,
* choose to be connected to communicate to those equal to us, and
* can be or not to control access to ourselves to those below us.

So Sterling has it right, but backwards: connectivity is not any indicator of poverty, rather impoverishment indicates a lack of power, which means being at the beck and call of the powerful.

And the powerful want their servants to be always connected to serve them.