ABSTRACT
It is a cliché of a certain kind of social constructivism that media incarnate as both utopia and dystopia and that this volatility limits what we are able to say about media as opposed to the discursive contexts that appear to determine its utopian or dystopian identity. Consider in this light the following contrasting responses to the connectedness that mobile phones permit (we will come to the camera very soon). One occurred on the afternoon of Sharad Purnima, the full moon during the month of Ashvin, on 29 October 2012. The phone belonged to my friend Atit and there was a message from his Jain guru urging him to recite 324 navkars (complicated Jain mantras) at one thirty that coming morning. The bulk short message service (SMS) immediately connected a large community of believers in aspirational and devotional behaviour. A few weeks later this guru would visit Atit's home and diagnose the vastu (spatial auspiciousness) of his father's puja rom with a smart phone application. Media again seemed to offer a utopian promise (see Figure 3.1).
