From the point of view of individual users, the cell phone provides opportunities: to enlarge the number of potential communication partners available at any specific place and moment to distance oneself from current collocal interaction fields by directing attention to remote partners to expand the peripheral layers of social relationships by cultivating weak ties to partners one is not ready to meet to shield oneself from new and unpredictable contacts by signaling unavailability and by maintaining more frequent interaction with familiar partners (e.g. friends and kin) to maintain contact with any other individuals (or organizations) irrespective of movement and changing spatial locations to combine divergent roles which would otherwise necessitate one’s presence at different places at the same time to switch rapidly between highly different (and usually segregated) roles and situational contexts, so that there is more discretion as to how they should be separated or combined to take. From Wordnik.com. [Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Sociology of the Mobile Phone] Reference
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