Federico reflections on Neale

I would like to focus here on the idea that the advent of IP has created the notion of “absolute connectivity,” which works as a platform on which the idea of personalization (so essential for the development of the IT market) develops. In particular, I was fascinated by the concept of entitlement, so well-described by David Neal in his talk.

As Neal pointed out, in the pre-GSM era, calling a phone number meant hoping to reach the person on the other end of the phone; however, with the advent of cell phones, the idea of getting in touch with the other person became a given, and our sense of entitlement in this respect has become part of our communication process.

Such entitlement is the result of the conversion of three key concepts: personalization (“whatever I want”), time-shifting (“whenever I want”), and place-shifting (“wherever I want”). While the last two are self-explanatory, personalization is more complicated. For example, back in the 80s, people came to enjoy innovations such as walkmen and diskmen where and when they wanted. However, only the mobile phone industry has caused people to become obsessed over the notion of personalization: the development of product quantity and quality eventually led to the idea, and reality, of a cell phone-related/dependent community.

The post-GSM approach to communication has fostered connectivity among individuals. This enhanced the necessity of the individual to diversify itself and become unique in its community, yet maintain its role as part of it.

That the principle behind building a community can be the self-satisfaction of each component individual and nothing else is, in my view, an interesting delimitation to the notion of community; a limitation that IT companies were able to successfully exploit.