SJSU News Archive
Date: 02/03/2009
How has personal technology changed how we move through the world? San José State Professor Andrew Wood answers that question in his latest book, City Ubiquitous: Place, Communication, and the Rise of Omnitopia, available in bookstores this month. Wood's research included a 108-hour road trip from New York to San Francisco in which he spoke just five words but managed to get lodging, food and gas using Internet reservations, online kiosks, after-hours key dispensers and anticipatory disengagement. The five words? Andy, Wood, Andy, Wood and sauce!
"Today's melding of place and media threatens our ability to experience meaningful human interaction," Wood said. Among his book's many threads is a discussion of the iPod as an "aural enclave," referring to the way we use earphones to isolate ourselves in moving bubbles of sound, carrying miniature versions of our worlds with us, even as we ignore the world outside. Wood even offers tips for iPod etiquette, including, "One bud or two?"
Wood, an associate professor of communication studies, has authored or co-authored many more books on Internet communication, reality television and roadside Americana.