Abstract :
IS MOBILE TECHNOLOGY helping us build a new utopia or the bane of civilised life? Philosophers might wonder if the two are mutually exclusive, but for many it is as much a generational divide as anything else. Older users may resent what they see as the constant pressure to be always online, while younger people often welcome the opportunities that smartphones and the Web bring for building new and immersive social networks, for serendipitous learning, and for ready access to information of all kinds. Could the man who created the very word utopia - Sir Thomas More, in his 1516 book of that name - have imagined any of this? Perhaps he could. After all, the technology is different but many of the underlying fears have existed through the ages.