Since Digicel services began to operate in remote areas of Papua New Guinea in mid-2007, enthusiasm for mobile telecommunication devices has become a pan-New Guinean phenomenon. During our last fieldwork period, between December 2010 and December 2011, no mobile phone network existed among the Karawari people in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. However, their expectations were high and some individuals had already purchased mobile phones, which they used as torches, radios, and cameras. In Ambonwari village, people were convinced that Digicel would soon build its tower on their land and enable them to ring both the living and the dead. The dead had already interfered with calls and some people were suspected of possessing phone numbers of their deceased relatives. In our article we explore the relationship between mobile phones, the increasing fascination with phone numbers, and the ways in which the Ambonwari perceive, interpret, and engage with the world.Keywords: mobile phone, new technologies, spirits of the dead, religious movements, Karawari people, Sepik, Papua New Guinea Different theories surrounding the impact of technology on societies and cultures have emerged over time. From a substantive perspective new technology is a domineering and irresistible force in its own right. People have no control over it; they have to keep up with new techniques and these need to be efficient. Technology also serves to explain everything that is taking place in the world, be it society, politics, economy, science or art. From this point of view, technology is not neutral but changes cultures and shapes societies and values (Borgmann 1984: 9; Verbeek 2005: 136). From an instrumentalist perspective, however, technology is value-neutral. Human beings have been perceived as tool-makers since the beginning and technology, regardless of its complexity, is simply an instrument that humans use to accomplish certain tasks. Both rationalism and liberal democracy hold to this perspective, leaving values to develop in a private sphere (Borgmann 1984: 10; Verbeek 2005: 136). Recently a new post-phenomenological perspective has criticised both of these approaches, since they separate technology from human beings, their histories and their cultures. Don Ihde, a philosopher with a keen interest in the history of technology and anthropology, has tried to develop a positive phenomenological framework and phenomenologically-oriented hermeneutics for understanding human-technology relations (Ihde

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Ambonwari people from the East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, had a rich repertoire of song-dances, each of which was associated with specific events and the birth of something new. Together they represented the entire human life cycle as well as the cosmology at large. Visual, verbal and tactile modalities of singing and dancing were tightly interwoven; images and symbols were enacted by the dancers, in their decoration, arrangement, movements and in the whole ceremony and were firmly situated in their landscape. Accordingly, song-dances were also an important practice in male initiation ritual. The first song-dance of the ritual was the crocodile song-dance. This article analyses different transpositions of images and meanings which can be decoded from the dance, from the objects that were part of the initiation rite, and from the parallelism and rich allegory of verses. These transpositions operate at different levels until they converge upon the existential facts of birth and death. In the new millennium and under the influence of a Catholic charismatic movement, however, Ambonwari broke off their relationships with spirits, abandoned the men's houses and stopped talking about male initiation ritual. Along with other traditional song-dances the crocodile song-dance has been taken over by the song-dances of the Holy Spirit. These changes in social and cultural perspectives, which are still taking place, are at the same time products and producers of the changes in their relationship to 'space' and 'time' which are at the same time changes in visual and auditory perception and expression of their lifeworld. All these changes should not be seen merely in some abstract or symbolic terms but as tangible processes generated by people's action.

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