Cellphones: isolution or will it be isolation?
Iwas in a busy store one night recently when the electricity went out, plunging everyone into total darkness. But most customers reacted calmly and identically.
We reached for our cellphones and clicked on our flashlight “apps” – turning our phones into miniature torches. In seconds the store was illuminated by 20 beams of light – and most people continued shopping.
Some say the computer is the biggest technological transformation in history, along with the wheel, the light bulb, the printing press and the ballpoint pen, which definitely spared my pants from decades of ink spills.
But the most influential gadget may yet prove to be the cellphone. It’s rapidly becoming a magic wand that does all kinds of amazing things – and it seems to have no limit.
Wave your cellular iwand and it’s a GPS that helps you navigate to anywhere in ways ancient explorers would have killed for. Point it at the night sky and it identifies every last star and constellation in the heavens wherever you are on Earth.
My friends use it for birdwatching since it identifies every bird by its call, while others use it to find the nearest cheap gas, or bank, or bathroom, or police radar trap. I use my phone for dictation – when I get an idea, I speak it into my cell, which converts my words to writing and emails them to me.
My phone also translates for me when I’m travelling – but best of all it finds my car every time I lose it, with one push of a button.
We somehow take these things for granted as phone science progresses, but it really is a form of magic. If I’d showed up 100 years ago with a cell in my hand, kings would have fallen to their knees in awe thinking I was a wizard. Or burnt me as a witch, along with my wand.
Who would have guessed the clunky old phone of my childhood would ever turn into this? Back then, it was a huge black dial thing wired to the wall by a cord – with a receiver as heavy as a barbell.
Many of us lived with “party lines” so we couldn’t use our phone for hours because our neighbours were “on” the line. And even when they weren’t, we still couldn’t get through to our friends – their numbers were busy because of their party line.
Now we live in a wireless world where 80 per cent of humans have a cellphone with instant access and it won’t be long before it’s 100 per cent.
I spent a day in a sprawling South African shantytown two months ago where millions live in one-room tin and wood shacks beside the highway.
But the dirt streets between them were filled with people yak- king on cells – from old women carrying heavy loads on their heads to young people surfing the Web on smart phones.
Not having a cellphone is the new poverty – electronic poverty.
Yet we’re just at the start of this revolution in our pockets. Soon, cells are expected to replace our house keys and car keys – as well as credit cards, bank accounts and even money.
Phones are even being developed that will include stethoscopes, heart monitors, body fat calculators and defibrillators to assist people having heart attacks.
Who knows – maybe they’ll have drills to do carpentry, or home dentistry or self-surgery. How long until there’s an ultrasound app you can hold to your wife’s belly and shout: “Ohmigod it’s a girl!”
Cellphones even have magical political powers that are revolutionizing revolutions. They allowed millions of Egyptians to share political thoughts, organize rallies – and later capture videos of police atrocities to show the press.
These gadgets may actually help change the world. But like all magical things cellphones also have a dark Faustian side – a price we must pay.
They’re replacing face-to-face conversation with Facebook chats – and close friends with anonymous e-friends. Many people stare transfixed at their phones instead of at those around them – and fill every possible moment of reflection by checking their email messages.
Most young adults now say they prefer a cellphone to a car – and probably to their lovers. I’m waiting for a film called “I Married My Phone” – starring an ipreacher who proclaims: “I now pronounce you man and phone.”
Virtual life is competing with real life – because there’s always an online phone experience to compete with the one you’re living. The information age is becoming the isolation age.
So while the cellphone is revolutionizing life, it’s too early to say whether it’s for better or worse. Meanwhile, I see by my “I Spy On My Readers” app that you’re ready for this column to end.
So it has.