Cellphones speeding up cities?

Piece in TheFeature by Smart Mobs author Howard Rheingold about how cellphones and wireless PDAs are changing the metabolic process of cities , with citizenry squash even more into their day by being able to make call , send emails and school text messages , etc while convert or moving about the urban center :

As a result of the extra telephone - enabled piece of work carry out while commuting or moving from place to place within a urban center , Townsend believes the pace of urban life is quicken . “ As every person nail more tasks , communicates with more hoi polloi , coordinate activities among more social networks in the same amount of clock time , the aggregate effect is an acceleration of the urban metabolism . ” If Townsend is right , today ’s New York minute will seem too leisurely for tomorrow ’s crowds of hypercoordinated and autoscheduled city - denizen . One key challenge to civic leader and urban planners is to create more public space that attract transient residential area of wireless urban nomad who assist as creativity and joviality magnets , attract elan vital to the social nub of the city .

We ’re prosperous enough not to have to transpose anywhere during the day , but we know what he ’s babble out about . We ’ve adopt a high-risk use of trying to only make our lengthy societal speech sound call while we ’re walking to or from something , like walking to the post part ; it ’s difficult to free just sit around the family , chatting on the phone , when there is so much else ( read : blogging ) to do .