Contents 1/2002 Home

From my own experience, I remember where the roots of the Finnish communications giant Nokia lie: in rubber boots, tyres and telephone cables. I remember the fresh smell of rubber when a box of new boots was opened at home.      Much later, I worked in an office building in Helsinki with a view of the Nokia Cable Factory from the windows and its neon letters on the roof. One day I strained my eyes to see what was happening on the roof: a man was running between the letters with a shovel, dropping snow down on to the ground, with no safety cord or belt to stop him from falling. Now it seems like a premonition – wireless Nokia, no cables. (Fortunately he didn't fall off!) Information technology, familiar to the non-technically minded in the form of mobile phones and computers hooked to the internet, is an endless source of utopias – and caveats.      My own experiences of mobile phones and the internet are those of the average user. But there are many ways of utilising the new technology. Studies of mobile phone use among young people in Finland reveal ways of sending messages to friends without paying anything, for instance by making the phone ring a certain number of times. The information in text messages has also been condensed to the extreme, as discussed in Tekstarimania ('Text-message mania', see pages 7–8).      Over thirty per cent of the Finnish population own mobile phones, and increasingly fewer young people even consider getting an 'old-fashioned' land-line telephone. The broadband connections of internet service providers make it unnecessary to have an ordinary phone even for the world-wide-web. In the Helsinki region Elisa plc, founded as the Helsinki Telephone Company more than a hundred years ago, has a monopoly on land-phone lines. Last autumn one of its executives stated – perhaps without due reflection – that the company is no longer interested in small customers using land-phone lines, because of the losses that they generate. For me, this went against the grain, as I thought of a lonely old lady whose connections with the world outside are perhaps restricted to just her telephone.      Despite our technology hubris, Finland's so-called information society includes large groups of people who still remain outsiders because they lack the money or the necessary skills – the poor, the aged, the ill and many people in the outlying regions where non-existent infrastructure makes the new technology too costly. This could be compared to the situation in the developing countries. A French study underlines how the vast majority of those who benefit from the new technology belong to the world's affluent, white, Western – and male – population. Communication has become the ultimate buzzword, be it in the form of e-mail, internet use, mobile phones, or meetings held in realtime via satellite. I won't try to define concepts here, but to me communication has an instrumental ring to it. It has the purpose of exchanging information and opinions in order to arrive at some kind of solution, a business agreement or political negotiation. This goal-oriented and 'official' communication excludes a mixed and varied area that lies closer to most of us; the domain of personal contact, exchanging news, gossip – and chatter.      Of course we still meet each other face to face, over a coffee, beer or a glass of wine, and chat about things. But the new technology does not support such a culture. E-mails are usually bare messages of a few lines, not to mention the texts transmitted by mobile phone. And the fear of phone bills stops most of us from babbling on the mobile, at least me.      Chatter, however, is an important form of expression in human culture. It is not just idle talk, but, as sociologists would put it, 'social adhesive' maintaining relations between people and even the structures of human communities. Modern-day readers are delighted, interested and surprised by the abundance of detail, comments, forms of address and expressions of emotion in old letters.      But redundancy and abundance are lost in instrumental communication, which leads me to my goal – the subject of literature. In a sense, all literature, even a poem of a few words or a carefully crafted work of prose, is redundant from the point of view of communication, because it contains details, moods and depictions that are not necessary for any specific purpose. Regardless of form or format, literature, and fiction in particular, serves the 'culture of chatter'.      Literature does not need to excuse itself; in an environment of communication that has grown fast and terse it can be viewed from a new perspective. We can still rejoice in speech, language and writing extending to the different layers of our mind and imagination. CU!      Kristina Carlson      Editor-in-chief   Contents 1/2002 | Home