Mobility is a relational concept and that 'one's mobility may well be another's immobility' (Albertsen and Diken in Bechmann, 2004: 84).

This is the stance that Virilio's work takes, specifically that technology turns able bodies into disabled bodies (Mcquire, 145). Virilio takes a rather apocalyptic definition of motility, situating it alongside the subject's evolution of being mobile, then motorised, then motile (Mcquire, 145).

If in fact the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth experienced the advent of the automotive vehicle, the dynamic vehicle of the railroad, the street and then the air, then the end of this century seems to herald the next vehicle, the audio-visual one, a final mutation: static vehicle, substitute for the change of physical location, and extension of domestic inertia, a vehicle that ought at last to bring about the victory of sedentariness, this time an ultimate sedentariness. (Virilio in Mcquire, 1999: 145)

Mobility and Motility

Before tackling the concept of motility, we must first consider the concept of mobility. Mobility is the ability to be mobile, to be able to move freely (automobility is autonomous mobility, usually achieved through the artificial assistance of a vehicle).