:Cellphone is a beautiful and useful technology but it can be annoying at times to us and our surrounding.--
Last week I was in a cashier line at my neighborhood's Target store and like I do most of the time I started to observe the people in my surrounding. My eyes caught the attention of a young couple, in their early thirties in the line on my right. I knew they were together because they were both pushing the almost full shopping cart with one hand. However, although they were together, they were minding their own separate phone conversations while standing right next to each other. I looked at them and I told myself technology is a beautiful human discovery but it makes us inhuman. Here is a couple who, if cell phones were inexistent, could have had a great time talking to each other, by being available to each other while having a good time shopping together.

The first phone book was published on 21 February 1878 in New Haven, Connecticut, USA with 50 names, only 11 of them in residences. This innovation was such a big event I don’t think people saw any disturbance with the use of the use of telephone back then. With time passing and the technology improving, more people got access to telephone service. And like with any other invention some unspoken phone etiquettes were quickly established: one should not call someone else’s house too late; you don’t pass on someone’s number without his/her consent. Years later, on April 3, 1973, the first public telephone call on a portable cellular phone was placed; thirty-four years after that call the development of cellular phones goes way beyond that of its predecessor land line phone. Today cell phone customers can download news, music and entertainment content at broadband-like speeds and also transfer data at blazing speeds. There is also stereo Bluetooth technology, a microSD card slot and GPS capability blows away the consumers on the run. It’s amazing to observe what we can do with a mobile phone.

With this new technology, while it does make our live easier, it does not make it better. We’ve become too obsessed with our toys. Some people cannot leave their phones home for half a day, feeling disconnected from the cellular world they panic. People want to be accessible at anytime, and everywhere. People are on their phones on the bus, in stores, in waiting rooms. We are becoming a society of machines; we are embedded to technology. I have seen people rush out from the subway as if there are missing air to pull their phones to check their voice mail or call someone once they are outside. It’s common nowadays to see two people in a car both on a mobile phone having their own private conversations. A growing number of people carry with them two different cellular phones because they cannot stay on the phone if the caller on another network. It’s interesting to see how long we can stay on the phone with someone while we are silent most of the time in the presence of that same person.

The worst thing I think the cell phone is doing to society is killing family time, and distancing family relationships instead of reinforcing the bonds. When we pick up our kids from school we do not have time for simple questions like: "how was school son?" because we are busy on the cell phone. Kids do not talk to their parents anymore because they too have phones to communicate all day long with their friends on the same network, when of course they are not lost in that PSP game. I have a friend who turns his cell phone off, once he gets home. I think that is a great step toward getting his life back and become simply a person… again. Because of my profession, I receive several calls a day mostly from friend seeking for help to resolve a computer problem they have. It may take 4:00 minutes to resolves something that appears to be complicated and 4:00 hour to fix a problem that sounds simple to the caller. Last October I made the decision not to receive any call on Wednesdays evening and weekends to rest and spend more time with my family. I have not been able to keep that resolution so far, maybe I should do like my friend: turn my phones off on Wednesdays evening and weekends.

The next time you are in a waiting room, on the bus, riding with a friend in a car, or shopping with your significant other or spouse, or simple spending time with family, turn that cell phone off if you want to be a person again and acknowledge the presence of the person (s) you are with.




Romel

New York, January 21, 2007