ME & MOBILE PHONES
Okay, I am the
first to admit I am an IT dinosaur and a techno nerd. But that is not the main
reason why mobile phones (cell phones) and I do not get along.
I cannot stand the things! Let me tell you
why.
It all started about 20 years ago when I was
working for a transportation company and part of my role was to travel
interstate regularly. So there I was one particular morning at Melbourne
airport in a Departure Lounge, dutifully lining up at the back of a long queue
about to board a plane for Sydney.
I was distracted by a noticeably loud voice
carrying on a one-sided conversation. I looked around me to see who was making
all the noise. Weaving in and out of the queue, was this businessman encircling
the passengers to ensure he got maximum exposure. In his hand was an object
that looked like, and seemed as large as, those chunky walkie-talkies you see
in World War 2 movies. Do you remember when mobile phones were big, unwieldy
units when they were first introduced?
Well, there he was shouting into the thing,
no doubt to make sure everyone within range could see and hear what an
important big-shot he was. After he had wandered past me for the third time, I
said indignantly, “Give it a rest!” But he was so self-absorbed with his
performance, he did not even hear me.
Of course, since the 1990s mobile phones
have shrunk dramatically in size and their usage has grown exponentially, so
much so that if people discover you haven’t got one, they look at you with a
mixture of distrust, contempt, pity, horror and disbelief. It’s even worse than
the reaction I get when people discover I am a vegetarian!
“You really do not have a mobile phone? How
can you possibly get by without one?”
Short answer – easily!
It seems to me that that the world has gone mad with
mobile phone mania. They are all-pervasive. There is no escaping them and the
idiotic one-sided conversations that are afflicted upon you in public places,
restaurants, public transport etc. are nauseating.
Remember the days when people had private conversations in public telephone
booths? When our pensive moments were not disrupted by some twerp’s mobile phone’s
ring, buzz, song, idiotic jingle, shout, hysterical laughter or squawks going
off when you are travelling on public transport? If that is not enough,
invariably there is a scramble by the recipients of the call as they try to find
their phone in their handbag, pocket or back-pack and eventually blurt out their
joyous acknowledgment that someone has bothered to connect with them! Very often
their voices are so loud, overflowing with happiness and excitement, you wonder
why they bother to use their phone. Surely if their caller is within a radius
of a couple of miles, they would clearly hear every word without the necessity of a
phone?
Then all of us fellow travelers are subjected
to every inane word uttered by these inconsiderate twerps as we collectively
pray that 1. the conversation will be short; or 2. the phone’s battery will go
flat; or 3. the person will get off at the next stop. Regrettably, it has been my
unhappy experience that very rarely do any of these things actually occur.
People seem to be obsessed with their mobile
phones. They are constantly in their hands as they check something here, tweak
something there, or they are rabbiting away texting. Thank god, we are not
compelled to read the drivel that people must be texting to each other!
And it is now taken for granted by service
providers and other organizations that everyone has one of these devices. Whenever
you’re registering for something, especially over the Internet, it is becoming
increasingly mandatory to provide a mobile phone number. For example, some time
ago I tried to arrange to set up a Gmail account with Google. Easy, except they
only text or voice mail the codes (whatever they are) to a mobile phone number,
otherwise bad luck Charlie. Is this discrimination or what?
Apart from this kind of unfair discriminatory
inconvenience, life is far less complicated for me without a mobile phone. So
far, no disaster has befallen me, my friends or my family simply because I
refuse to embrace this technology. Besides, what with the ever-increasing
number of technical gizmos constantly being added to mobile phones, I am sure
that the stress of trying to master the unfathomable, would send me to an early
grave.
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