Non-places restored

The mobile phone suddenly restores meaning to non-places: airport lounges, highways, public transport, shopping malls. Where the physical crowd is empty of social ties or meaning, individuals re-enter their social network via their mobile phones, and thus restore society. We often get an empty feeling and then make an quasi pointless call or message on the mobile to fill idleness in the void. We don't get an empty feeling and we don't make pointless calls when we are in a homely or socially comforting place. We do when the place, crowded or not, is a social void. The moment we make that call, we reinstate social meaning in the non-place, even if it's virtual and even if it's about each individual separately. To those excluded from the mobile society, it remains a non-place. See Timo Kopomaa, "The city in your pocket", p. 41.