New Communications for the New Year

The tragedy of my new year started on NYE when I lost my cell phone. For the second time this year.

Last photo of my N95, minutes before it was stolen, Vancouver, February 2008

Last photo of my Nokia 6120, a week before it vanished, Manila, December 2008

While the first one was particularly depressing because my contacts then was a collection of everyone I knew from my pre-academe days, this second one was tragic because I knew I would be missing out on the many witty/thoughtful/romantic (though mostly unoriginal) messages to be disseminated by friends and the like when the new year rings in. I wouldn't get a replacement SIM until the evening of Jan2, so there was no way I could retrieve the new year messages and reply. Surely, any believer of Silverstonian hospitality in mediated communications would deem my network management supremely irresponsible and unethical, I thought.

But then, as an academic, we're asked to be reflexive about our experiences, right? Rather than chalk up the experience down to my long list of 2008 disasters (alongside my dengue fever, a canceled Barcelona trip, Ateneo office politics, my dwindling allowance as a result of the pound-to-peso exchange rate, my aimless research, more office politics, Papa's illness), I thought about what it could all mean for my 2009.

So with a healthy bout of self-reflection and other forms of divination (i.e., consulting www.astrologyzone.com), I thought that my losing the phone was sending me a message about my communication philosophy for the new year.

Looking back, my 2008 introduced me to a whole lot of nice people. The year allowed me to make new friends, meet academic idols, go on quite a few memorable dates even, meet wonderful bright-eyed new students.

Best Tour Guide: Ethan in Montreal


Best and Priciest and Longest Lunch: Neeks/Nenita/Clinton/Lulu/Me at Gordon Ramsay's, Claridge's

Best Stealth Photography (academic division): Anna and Me with Sandra Jovchelovitch


Best Stealth Photography (Greek god division): The winning Adonises of Athens


Best Travel Partner/Jewelry Haggler/Santorini Hiker: Nenita


Best Buy: Gladiator Sandals from Athens, for equivalent Php1200


Best Pinoy Moment in Cambridge: Posing with (Crying) Baby Liam at the Corpus Great Hall

Best Academic Bigwig (and Longest Facebook Thread): Leloy and Me with Benedict Anderson


Best Field Trip: Com100 kids and MAG2.0 kid (!) in GMA TrackTrip

Best Papparazi Moment: "Save Media Studies, Save the World!" with Jeula and Jech


Best Fake Couple Shot (Runner-up): Neeks and Jon


Best Fake Couple Shot (Winner): Trixie and Jon

I went from being Ms Congeniality (Paul-Plazo 2007) to being Ms Hospitality (Cabanes 2008).

But it was also a very weird year in that I also experienced being Other, capital O, in many occasions that truly rocked me, tested me, frustrated me... To the point that I had different friends at different times prescribing me various pills, mood-enhancers, and sleeping aids to cheer me back to my old spirited self. It was a year when I had friends teaching meek old me how to "fight back" and how "not to care"--words that the Jon who grew up in a Disneyfied world was uneasy with. It was a year when I learned what frenemies truly were and how painful it was to always be guarded around certain people.

So, while I will certainly miss my nice phone and the few hundred contacts I had there, I will certainly not miss them all those contacts. In the coming year, I really should practice what I preach and value not the quantity of connection, but the quality of connection. Not friends in their multiplicity, but friends in their particularity. And, with all due respect to John Durham Peters, I think this year I would go for dialogue over dissemination. Discretion and communion with few over indiscriminate communication to all. Perhaps, hospitality not in its infinity, but hospitality always tempered with justice. And, maybe, cosmopolitanism--openness to others--but possibly of a more cautious and judicious kind.

As a media/communications ethics scholar, I often get swept away by the grand exhortations of philosophers conceiving of spheres, polises, and utopias "where nothing is misunderstood, hearts are open, and expression is uninhibited" (Peters 1999). But perhaps, coming from a year of tragicomic misunderstandings and double-barreled/double-meaninged/double-entendred/double-doubled sayings and saids, I would need a humbler, more moderate ethic of communication that in itself is not "too much" or "too little", but a more "proper" command, a proper obligation, a proper expectation.

Instead of Silverstone's fixation of distance in a horizontal plane (with his "too close" and "too far"), the more apt orientation here is seeing ethics in the vertical, and finding also the "proper distance" in terms of the "height" of expectations that we should have on ourselves and others when dealing with our others.

So happy new year to you all. May you find proper distance--both in its horizontal and vertical articulations--in your communications with others throughout the year!