Mobile telephony constitutes a new sort of challenge to philosophy, and indeed to the humanities. The mobile telephone is a machine which corresponds to deep, primordial human communicational urges. The term “mobile information society” needs to be reconsidered. Mobile communications point to a future which offers a wealth of knowledge, not just of information, and promises to reestablish, within the life of modern society, some of the features formerly enjoyed by genuine local communities.

Kristóf Nyíri has published widely on Wittgenstein, Austrian intellectual history, and the philosophy of communication. He directs the interdisciplinary research program "Communications in the 21st Century", conducted jointly by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and T-Mobile Hungary.