Cell Phones Are Middle Aged Now

It's already been 40 years!  In  April, 1973, the most important (and in n my view, annoying) phone call in technology history was made. Using a prototype Motorola inventor Martin Cooper made the first call on a mobile phone that he created.  Shortly thereafter, tech savvy Japan became the first battlefield filled with cell phones as that country widely adopted them. The world has not been the same since...unfortunately.  Except for anywhere on my presence,  cell phones are everywhere now. A United Nations study says that today the world has 6 billion cell phone subscribers. And more of them are moving use the so called "smart phones". I have a theory that the dumber the human the more likely he or she will have a smart phone. But that's a subject for another day. Anyway, most sellers of them claim the global smart phone population topped 1 billion this year.

It's astounding how fast cell addiction has taken hold. Given that the total world population is about 7 million, 6 million cell phones in use works out to at about one for every human on earth (given babies and toddlers have not yet been introduced and addicted to cell phones).  This might be the world's fastest acceptance of a new technology, even more so than the land line phone. Given that cells are heap and within economic reach of almost everyone, this is easier to understand.

I used to claim that the invention of the automobile was the world's single most affecting technology. It promoted the mobility that changed the way the world lived, thought and behaved. But much of that change was a good thing. Cell phones seem to me as much a negative addiction as a positive one.  They have promoted a mindlessness and triviality in behavior and  altered the way humans relate to each other (we now relate as much from a distance, not personally to those we can see and touch in our immediate physical environment). Amazingly, the cell phone is still a novelty, as makers keep introducing modifications to further addict users. The makers frantically try to keep users anxious to own the latest cell modification.

Despite all the convenience of cell phones, they have made the world a more impersonal place.  It does seem that humans now value convenience over quality of life and social etiquette The trade-off for the convenience of the phones is the deterioration in personal relations and the hardening of society. It makes me wonder whether the cell phone is not the single greatest impact of how we relate as humans. Sadly, I think that impact has been more a negative than beneficial.