Even more exaggerated are the claims about individualism. Arguably, the proliferation of cellphones reinforces group behaviour rather than individualism. Mostafa Terrab, Morocco's telephone regulator, says Moroccan immigrants in Europe rely heavily on mobile phones to keep in contact with their families back home. The mobile phone, he says, is “the virtual family nucleus” of a largely illiterate society. The teenagers who have embraced the devices use them mainly to reinforce their social networks. They are forever phoning each other to rearrange meetings as they wander around Tokyo or Helsinki—and each ring of the phone adds to their popularity count. Having a cellphone “is like having someone beside you all the time”, one Japanese woman told a local newspaper.
What about the mobile information society? Certainly airport lounges are full of people desperate to log on to the Internet, suggesting a huge potential demand for phones that will allow them to do that with less bother and no wires. But much of what the mobile-phone industry is offering is not really new; it is just an easier way of doing things that people are doing already, from checking their e-mail to paying bills wherever they are. Pekka Palin, one of the founders of WapIT, points out that many mobile-phone users do not want the sort of sophisticated services that a “mobile information society” entails. They want old-fashioned things like horoscopes and jokes.