ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the 'micro-network society' fabricated and facilitated by mundane technologies such as mobile phones and people's practices in their everyday lives. It reveals that mobile networks are embedded in urban places and are related with emotional spaces. The chapter explains the generation of mobile networks through technological and institutional changes in Korea. Mobile networks shatter the boundaries between absent and present spaces. The mobile landscapes signify that the mobile phone can provide alternative socio-spatial networks in the urban mediascape of absent presence. The techno-social networks of mobile phones can be characterized as individualized and decentralized spatial networks and accelerated and speeded up temporal networks. In terms of Granovetter's social networks, whereas e-mail networks relate to 'weak links' formed at larger spatial scales, mobile networks relate to 'strong links' at smaller spatial scales. The chapter examines that the mobile networks involve paradoxical emotional spaces in relation to 'mobile users' emotions and desires to be connected with those networks.
