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TechnoratiOnly The 14 Of You Out There Who Remain Ambivalent About The Incessant Place of Cell Phones In Our Lives Need Read This
Bridal Shower
by George Bilgere
Perhaps, in a distant café,
four or five people are talking
with the four or five people
who are chatting on their cell phones this morning
in my favorite café.
And perhaps someone there,
someone like me, is watching them as they frown,
or smile, or shrug
at their invisible friends or lovers,
jabbing the air for emphasis.
And, like me, he misses the old days,
when talking to yourself
meant you were crazy,
back when being crazy was a big deal,
not just an acronym
or something you could take a pill for.
I liked it
when people who were talking to themselves
might actually have been talking to God
or an angel.
You respected people like that.
You didn't want to kill them,
as I want to kill the woman at the next table
with the little blue light on her ear
who has been telling the emptiness in front of her
about her daughter's bridal shower
in astonishing detail
for the past thirty minutes.
O person like me,
phoneless in your distant café,
I wish we could meet to discuss this,
and perhaps you would help me
murder this woman on her cell phone,
after which we could have a cup of coffee,
maybe a bagel, and talk to each other,
face to face.
45 Comments so far
Show AllYou should all be so proud. Not a voice is raised to defend someone who's about to be murdered because she annoys you.
Yes, that's right; this post blithely advocates the murder of someone whose annoying, in the hopes of making the writer's life more "civilized". Nowhere in the poem is it suggested he ask the talker to lower her voice, move, or hang up. Nor does he force the user to acknowledge they're in a public space (the best way I've found, that works quite well, is to simply join in on their "private" conversation; it's quite fun and annoys them no end).
But no, the progressive way is to conspire with another in a faroff cafe to commit mayhem. When a culture's has degenerated into being little more than a War Machine, this is the result. The lust for the blood of these annoying gnats is blindly sought as the solution for all our problems. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
Anyone who's read Stephen King's book about cell phones might have a very difficult time using one very often.
I'm one of the 14 - I wouldn't have one, and still have the same antiquated phone I've had for nearly fifteen years that pretty much anchors me in place for any calls. I wouldn't have it if it wasn't for my kids who're hours away, and call me frequently. They all have cell phones, but only one drives and talks. Even knowing he's a multi-tasker like his mom, I still worry when he calls and says he's on his way somewhere. And I worry about the medical aspect of cell phones for them all.
I do believe we are experiencing a Chaos Point in history. I do believe it's not the technology itself, but the twisted use, the materialistic perversion of what has the potential to be real communication that is causing humans to crumple into jibbering idgits.
A dear friend presented me with a profound bumper sticker on my 80th birthday: Change is inevitable, Growth is optional
I treasure the Internet, but I also treasure my woodstove and my wind-up flashlight that makes a power outage in winter 'no big thing'
Human energy abounds; will we connect it with human intelligence....soon?
Mindless autobots on cell phones. I am always just astounded. I do not need one. Do not try to brainwash me into thinking that i do. You are wasting your time.
Two random thoughts and an anecdote.
1. A close friend of mine who spent a lot of time traveling around Europe assures me that much of this offensive cell phone usage in public places is very culturally based.
In Europe, patrons seated in restaurants, for instance, would never dream of placing an outgoing cell call, even if they were at a table alone. They would excuse themselves and go outside. If they got an incoming call while in a restaurant, tavern, or other public place where other people were within earshot, they would automatically excuse themselves and step outside to conduct the conversation.
Maybe what the United States (and Vancouver, apparently) suffer from is chiefly a manners deficit. Obtrusive, irritating cell phone stuff is a cultural phenomenon. Once upon a time (way back when I was a child), Americans who shared a party line residential telephone system had to develop rules of proper ettiquette, too, regarding such things as conversation length, eavesdropping, and surrendering the line upon another user's request.
2. The detailed monthly cell phone records generated by many carriers have become ubiquitous as evidentiary records in all sorts of courtroom litigation.
I personally have used cell records as a criminal defense attorney to beat at least two serious criminal cases that I recall - one of them a drive by shooting homicide. How could the defendant have been the person eyewitnesses mistakenly identified as standing in the parking lot shooting wildly with an AK47 - causing a flurry of panicked calls to 911 emergency services which pinpointed the exact minute that the gunfire was taking place - when my client's cell records meticulously corroborated he was some place else entirely, documenting who he was talking to, and for how long, right at the exact time of this heinous crime?
Just like these cell phone carrier records can be a big help in establishing a legitimate alibi for an innocent person, police and prosecutors similarly use these routinely generated carrier records to prove things like a call pattern suggesting conspiracy (particularly in drug cases).
3. On New Year's eve in a crowded night club, I went into the place's tiny mens' room to relieve myself. While standing at the urinal, suddenly a deep baritone voice behind the stall wall to my immediate left salaciously intoned "Well hi there honey! How you doing over there, sweet thing?"
I looked around, quite taken aback by what I feared was an unexpected, unwanted perve overture. Several awkward, silent moments passed. The deep male voice from the adjacent stall enclosure then said "I'm here at the club having a few. See you after midnight, sweeheart. Love you much." It was a guy on the toilet, talking on his cell phone not to me, but to his wife or girlfriend or some other significant other.
Bill from Saginaw
Heres the news about the release of the Google app 'Latitude':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qluzka9KJdA
Google says they will only hold a record of you last location. But what about when you are moving about a city, or jogging, or driving?
And you know sure as s**t stinks, the police and federal security agencies (Homeland Security especially) will have access to ALL the records of cell phone location co-ordinates. Google and the phone companies will roll over faster than a whipped dog to give the info to them.
So much for forming so-called 'flash mobs' via Twitter and Facebook... the authorities will be able to track any sudden convergence of cell phone RFID chips and be there waiting to smash the incipent protest. Or simply block the transit and street access to prevent the protest from ever forming.
Big Brother is not only watching and listening. He is stalking you.
Walk in peace.
you gotta stop calling them RFID chips. that's a totally different technology.
My (small) mistake.
Many phones now have BOTH RFID and GPS chips.
Not that the makers tell you that...
Walk in peace.
At risk or repeating myself, besides the obvious deliterious psychological and social effects, I am suprised that no one is pointing out the health effects.
The exposure of the side of one's head to microwave RF radiation for often hours per day, every day of the year cannot be beneign. There are studies showing increased brain tumor occurrence in cell phone users, but industry is doing what it does best and supressing this information.
---USAn---
I did mention this very subject in one of my posts further down..
Walk in peace.
I was recently walking down the sidewalk when an attractive woman looked up at me, smiled and said "hi, how are you" and for a fraction of a second my ego said "hey, I've still got it" and as I started to smile back and respond she continued walking right passed me, chattering away, the blue tooth hidden behind her long hair. Damn it.
Ha-ha!
That's happened to me too...
Or more generally, I've mistaken these greetings for the formerly common practice of striking a conversation with someone while waiting for the bus or such. Now people can get frightened by such stuff - particularly women. The only ligitimate conversation in a public place these days is over a cell phone.
---USAn---
We are losing the art of face to face conversation. We are missing out on the subtle clues of body language and facial expresion.
And as a result we are greatly limiting how we react to each other as human beings. How many times have you seen a person in a cell call behave VERY rudely, if not with outright hostility when politly asked to please lower their voice?
Emotions are becoming threatening and foreign. Strangers become frightening. More people in the West now have hundreds of social network site 'freinds' whom they have never met face to face, and really know nothing about, but will share intimate details of thier lives with at the drop of an electronic hat.
It's time to rethink what this interconnectedness really means, and what it is doing to us...
Walk in peace.
I guess I am one of the 14. Call me a ludite, but I don't a have cell phone (or TV, or guns, or drink holders), simply because they make me too accessible.
One only has to watch an owner "jump", the Pavlovian response to a cell phone ringing to realize that their effect on societal mental health is not positive. I used to work in DC and caught the Metro daily, where I would watch fellow passengers holding their cell phone like a security blanket, almost praying for it to ring, to offer reassuring words, to let the owner think that they may have some value, to someone.
Living without a cell phone means that I am not at beck and call of others. It also asserts our independence from others.
I feel sorry for cell-phone users.
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in their moccasins - Native American proverb.
Your newly minted Pres is a self admitted 'Crackberry' addict, who had to tranfer all of his social info to a Whitehouse approved and secure version of that infernal device.
And how many times have you seen people twich for thier cell, only to realise it's not theirs that is ringing?
And the annoying tinny 'Muzak', or worse yet, pop/rap ringtones blasting out at obnoxious volumes? The phone developer who thought up customised ringtones for recognised individual numbers, (allowing you to screen calls from one romantic interest while shagging another, for instance) should be marched to the nearest wall and be stoned with defunct cells until they stop twitching.
Add to this the continueing flood of commercials to add astrology/dating tips/stock market info/whatever else to the text feature of your cell, all for .99c/message, 10 message a day minimum.
I don't have a cell, I don't want a cell, I don't need a cell.
If someone wants to talk to me, they can call my landline.
Or speak to me face to face.
Walk in peace.
We were visiting some in-laws recently and the phone rang, the elder of the house didn't answer, everyone was uncomfortable with the ringing phone. Finally someone indignantly said "well aren't you going to answer that?" and the elder said "a phone call is a request, not a demand."
*ding ding*
WOOF!
AT&T Bell South.. it's who controls you.
Walk in peace.
When people are using those "Borg" bluetooth headsets I make it a point to listen to their side of the conversation, and the same with those annoying BEEEEP "two way walkie talkie" phones. I love it when they return my gaze with a look of annoyance.
d.k.shaw
I don't have my own cell phone anymore (a work phone must suffice) because I decided I didn't like the monthly bill. However, I have found the phones to be extremely useful. I work a lot and have three children, lots of social contacts. It's a way to coordinate events easily and safely. I can find my teenagers when I need to talk to them, I don't have to worry so much about something happening to me or my daughter on the road (she has an old car that I also sometimes use).
I guess I don't mind that people carry on their own conversations in ways that aren't the same as in the past. I am not their keeper and I can tune things out easily.
The only thing I would take issue with is compromising road safety by being so engrossed in a phone that there could be an accident (thus impacting others). Also, cell phones SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN ELEMENTARY OR HIGH SCHOOL. Learning just can't happen if you're distracted by your phone.
With the now common camera feature on most cells, I wonder how many nude pics have seripticiously been taken of your daughter in the school locker room and immediatly diseminated on the Net?
And I would be willing to bet you have no idea that the cell phone is also a tracking device, with it's integral RFID chip that CAN NOT BE TURNED OFF. There is even a Google app that allows you to track a selected cell phone in real time on Google maps.
And the people who drive while chatting, even while on 'hands free' (which many cells are NOT) has been shown to be as much of a danger as driving drunk, with IDENTICAL rates of collision, injury and death. I have lost count of the number of times I have nearly been hit while crossing the street. Legally. WITH THE LIGHT.
In Canada the other day, one family recieved a $207 000 phone bill, run up by their teen daughter texting her freinds at all hours of the day and night.
Being available 24/7 is not condusive to good mental health. There are times we need to be alone, to process the days events. People who are deprived of their cells have been shown to be moody, jittery, irritable and easily panicked. All signs of ADDICTION!
Threaten to take your children's cell phones away. Watch the meltdown and rage that results.
Walk in peace.
Let's go back to the glorious days of the Old West, when no one was empty inside and everyone could stand to be seen alone.
Those who live in the past should consider the benefits of having a device that unites society, regardless of someone's location on the globe. This device can be the most powerful, the simplest tool of the people to unite and fight oppression.
Yes, they're annoying in public. But so are car alarms, construction, airplanes, etc. There's a price to pay for progress.
Cell phones are replacing house phones today and I don't think their only practical use is if our life is in danger or your car has broken down somewhere. That's a limited way of looking at modern life.
The cell phone is also the best way to make people less resourceful, and ultimately, less useful.
E.g., I am often in the field, sometimes in pretty remote areas of some pretty remote countries, but they will have cell phone coverage. If I am working with a team and a problem comes up, people are immediately on their phone back to the lab to seek advice on what to do.
I make my own decisions, and have told my bosses that I want to work with similar people, people who will make decisions and take responsibility. I am not a nanny to some kid who panics when they cannot call for help. And it works. My team is full of MacGyvers who get things done. The other, apron-stringed cell-phone using teams are useless and never get the "good" jobs.
Believe me. It is a lack of resources that separates the men from the boys.
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in their moccasins - Native American proverb.
Oh please, so cars, airplanes, penicillin and movie cameras made people less resourceful, and ultimately, less useful?
Let's not block progress. Every human invention has its drawbacks, but the benefits greatly surpass them.
If people in your team are immediately on their phone back to the lab to seek advice it's because they're indeed weak-minded and unprepared, but don't blame cell phones.
I do blame cell phones, because they are enablers. People being lazy, take advantage of this technology with deleterious effect.
I might take this opportunity to suggest that "cars, airplanes, penicillin and movie cameras made people less resourceful".
Lets tackle penicillin. Wonderful thing, yes? Is it effective today? Well, no, not really. Why is this? Because by not using penicillin correctly (people are slobs, remember?), we have enabled MRSA bugs that have reached epidemic proportions. MRSA is a very serious problem.
The automobile. A great idea, and has "advanced" our civilization tremendously. But look at what we have today. A culture of "1 man, 1 car". Sprawling suburbia. Climate change. Global wealth differentials. Wasteful industry. Why did this happen? Because people insist on jumping in their car to drive to the end of their driveway to check the mail. The automobile has enabled people to be selfish slobs. Aircraft have been similarly abused, being used, among other things, to truck tourists on malevolent "eco-holidays".
Movie cameras. It is debatable whether they have "advanced" society, but they certainly provide us with entertainment. I do not believe it is even debatable whether packaged entertainment has made people any more productive and resourceful. Instead, it has encouraged a culture of laziness and narcissism.
OK, so I am a ludite. Technology has its place, but its application as entertainment is certainly a step backwards for both our species and our planet.
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in their moccasins - Native American proverb.
Cameras are not only for entertainment, have you forgotten the enormous historical, documentary record that they created?
Penicillin, cars and cell phones, when used correctly, bring more benefits to humanity than harm.
Or more properly, the adults from the babies.
Joe
Yes they are good in some ways. I am thinking that a nanny who is watching someone else's children or a working parent can supervise from afar. Or the fact cell phones allow people to communicate in regions where there is no wiring for a traditional phone system.
But the level of addiction and rudeness is what people do not like. The cell phone is like a Pavlovian bell takes precedence over the immediate environment. We have all become obstetricians, on call all the time.
Most polite people I know turn off their cell phones for a while at social events and check them now and then. I ask my students to turn off their cell phones during class, and if they have a possible emergency at home, put the phones on vibrate and step out to take a call. Otherwise you would be surprised how many people feel it is OK to whip out the phone and subject everyone in the room to one side of a conversation.
Another factor is the coltan that is used in cell phones, computers and video games. The demand is part of what keeps Congo as it is. I think we should monitor the number of devices we use.
Joe
I have been wondering about the psychological effects of technology, of having your mind in one place and your body in another. Right now, for instance. My body is here on a chair but my mind is in cyberspace. I am closer to say Thomas More or Siouxrose than anyone right here.
I see women walking down the street talking on the phone for blocks, ignoring their warm little children, their voices and their subtle little signals of delight and distress. I see three teenagers sitting next to each other, but each on the phone with someone else in a trio of unrelated conversations. I see someone stop short on the subways stairs in order to get one last minute of reception. They are oblivious to the fact they are holding up traffic. As galenww below expresses so poetically, you miss out on the ambient sounds such as spring birds or footsteps.
(So far, however, I don't know of anyone who talks on a cell phone during sex or while performing surgery. But I suppose it happens.)
For millenia humans have had experience of mind and body moving together through the world. That is how we evolved. When you talked with someone, you saw the eyes, the face, the body language. Except say when reading or meditating, your thoughts were connected with your physical experience.
Now we have more options about where our minds are. Has anything been lost?
Joe
Did I have my remark about likening cell phone use to Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim deleted from this space?
---USAn---
I have been reading all the remarks. I never saw a specific reference to the name Billy Pilgrim. Please try again!
Joe
The sci-fi writer William Gibson foresaw this as 'cyber-psychosis', predicting that when the person is deprived of their technology, they will go into panic, hysterics, rage or deep depression.
I have seen all of these on the streets of Vancouver when people lose their cells.
Not to mention the recognised but deliberately concealed corporate reports on the cancer causing effects of cell phones. Can't have the sheep knowing that they are giving themselves brain and bone cancer while they chatter on in their own little 'Seinfeld' worlds, now can we?
Walk in peace.
I HATE CELL PHONES!!! I'm a cashier, and people don't pay attention to what is going on now, the moment that damn thing rings. It must be answered! No it does not need to be answered. Nor do you need your phone so much that you leave your food and CHILD in the shopping cart, while you run out to the car to find your phone, so you can call people and tell them you found your phone...I could, and should write down one stupid, and one nice thing a customer does every day. Most of the stupid thing would be cell phone related! Morons!
At my business, I refuse to engage anyone who is talking on a cell phone. One conversation at a time is my policy.
I remember being in a grocery store awhile back and seeing a woman chatting away on her phone with her little girl in the shopping cart right in front of her. As I shopped up and down the aisles, I saw her several more times, yakking about absolutely nothing, while the little girl stared at her forlornly. I wanted to cry.
"The little girl stared at her forlornly".
The little girl is getting a lot of messages. One is that she is not an interesting or valuable person. The child's understanding of the give and take of language is not being enhanced, hearing only one side of a conversation. What a wasted opportunity to connect and teach.
Joe
Spot-on.
As someone who doesn't own a cell phone nor has any intention of getting one, I find the horrible impact of these things on age-old forms of human social interaction, and also on privacy, deeply disturbing.
Remember when, if in a public place, phone calls were only made in sound-resistant booths?
Then there are the obvious health effects, that every radio ham has to have a working knowlege of to pass the license exam, of operating a microwave transmitter right against the side of your head for hours every day, 365 days a year. Crazy.
---USAn---
Two things.
Last year, here in Vancouver, there was a young woman waiting for the Skytrain, yammering away on her cell at an annoying volume. The entire platform could hear her inane chatter, until one older man plucked the cell out of her hands, told the person on the other end she would call her back, and threw the cell onto the tracks, breaking it. The young woman became livid, screaming that 'someone' go down onto the tracks to retreive her phone for her.
The rest of the crowd on the platform applauded the older man's actions. The young woman later foolishly responded to the free weekly paper article featuring the incident, complaining she was the one who was wronged, that she could behave however she pleased in public. Dozens of people who were on the train platform at the same time responded to her, all pretty much agreeing with the older man's opinion that she was a 'braying c**t'.
The second item is the amusing number of times I have seen teens, usually girls, completely freaking out when their techno-toy is lost or goes to 'Silicon Heaven'. They personalise and adorn these shindogu with trinkets and kitchy fetishes, uploading their entire social network and personalities onto these disposable indulgences, often neglecting to do something as simple as memorise important phone numbers, or carry their bank account access cards, instead relying on the ever expanding network of phone capable banking and retail therapy.
When their toy inevitable dies, and they lose their composure, I laugh, often right in their faces, and go on my merry cell-free way...
Walk in peace.
Hooray for for those people in Vancouver - no wonder it gets the top rating for N. American cities.
I find the way the lit screen of the cell phone has replaced the cigarette lighter or candle at rock concerts to be pretty comical too.
---USAn---
O broken cell phone
Your Pavlovian song stilled
Listen to spring birds.
Walk in peace.
Lovely.
Joe
People use those things in public for what I can see is two reasons:
1. They hate to be alone because they're empty inside.
2. They can't stand to be seen alone. It's a need to look befriended or loved.
The only practical use for a cellphone is if your life is in danger or your car has broken down somewhere. But even then, we used to manage okay without these devices and live to tell the tale.
I have to agree with you, Clarkk...
A third reason might be that, with a cell-phone, one never has to endure the hardship of smiling at, making eye contact with, or saying "Excuse me" to anyone in public.
From what I've overheard, nearly all of these conversations are just jibber-jabber. No car trouble, missing kids, real-estate agents setting up appointments, etc.
One day, I brought some laundry to the cleaners. I've done this many times and never needed a cell-phone. But not the man in front of me; dropping off some clothing required another person's wisdom. Like Regis Philbin letting a contestant call a friend.
Next, I walked over to the drugstore to pick up a prescription. I've done this many times and never needed a cell-phone. But not the woman in front of me; a simple pharmacy pick-up became some kind of complicated ordeal. She was definitely not talking to a physician or insurance company, but somehow, another person somewhere had to do some kind of "research" before the task could be completed.
Later, I worked my way down a crowded aisle in the supermarket. To get through one spot, I tried to get the attention of a woman who was holding a blue light against her ear. She was confused and apparently needed another brain to select a jar of peanut butter.
Who is everybody talking to, and why does it seem that people can't make simple everyday decisions without needing to be coached?
'Big Brother is watching. Big Brother is listening.'
Walk in peace.
And like so many "convieniences", big-business always finds a way to make them necessities.
Formerly ubiquitous phone booths and pay phones (10 cents a call) have become nonexistent. Highways like the Pennsylvania Turnpike no longer maintain their emergency call boxes on the roadside.
Of course, cars themselves were once just a toy for status too. You could go practically everywhere - even to surrounding towns and cities on a seamless system of trolleys, interurbans and intercity trains. Even the trolleys weren't necesary for local chores as communities were compact and everything was short walk away. but business interests set to work completely changing every aspect of the built environment to make the automobile a necessity for at least 90 percent of USAns.
Now most people can't even imagine the possibility of such communities and transportation systems outside of science-fiction.
And don't get me started about the way central air conditioning - probably second only to the car in USAn's personal carbon emissions, has come to be regarded as this aboslute necessity for survival - even in the northern US.
---USAn---
I think you would enjoy Jim Kuntsler's works, 'The Long Emergency' and 'World Made BY Hand'.
Walk in peace.
I'm familiar with him from the documentary "The End of Suburbia" and several essays and recordings of his talks.
He got the mouth of a sailor though - even when presenting at professional
engineer's conferences.
---USAn---