Spotlight on Contemporary Telecommunications

You walk up the cellular service kiosk at your local mall, hoping enough time has passed for you to trade in your current phone for another free model. The phone in your back pocket, thanks to planned obsolescence, is missing the panel for the 7-PQRS button, and every gibbous moon, the LCD display stops working. If you aren’t eligible for a new phone, it will likely cost you several hundred dollars to replace, since the warranty on a phone doesn’t cover non-essential repairs like button panels (nor does it make any guarantees about Gibbous moon performance).

The guy behind the counter seems twelve at maximum, probably closer to seven. He has more lips rings than ring-tones, and his service badge displays the name “Chester.” You get the feeling that this 7-12-year-old could have explained to you, at age 17 or so, where babies come from.

“Congratulations, man,” he says. “You’re eligible for a free phone.”

“Thanks,” you say, adding, “Don’t worry about any of those new gadgets, either. I don’t need a camera or anything.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re getting a camera. You may not need it, but we don’t even carry models without them any more.”

Less than two decades ago, a cellular phone was a lamb-shank sized behemoth with a 45-minute battery. (Zack Morris had one on “Saved by the Bell,” remember?) Cell phones were reserved for the yuppies. You had to own a tie, or at least a shirt, to have one.

Now, the universe has crumbled. Pre-linguistic infants teach adults how to use their phones, while size reductions have rendered the telecommunications devices invisible to the nation’s geriatric population. People are scandalized if they drive through a five-mile area that doesn’t have service and often alarmed if the person they’re calling doesn’t answer. Twenty years ago, if it took three days to call someone back, no one thought twice. Now, five minutes is a lifetime.

Although it’s certainly not a new innovation, the advent of text messaging has further complicated cell phone usage. At its core is a fundamental paradox: an increasing illiterate nation is choosing more and more to communicate with words … or at least with letters, like TTYL, BRB, and LOL. (JCTMOCIR: Jesus Christ, this method of communication is ridiculous).

Add to the tally of recent developments the ever-popular MP3 feature on new phones. Citizens can now call their drug dealer and listen to “Dark Side of the Moon” with one handy device. Soon, the phone will also smoke you up and explain to you the difference between “seeing perception” and “being perception.”

Bluetooth devices, which have caught on in gymnasiums across the country, have finally resolved the fundamental problem of all phone conversations. How many times has this happened to you?

“I love talking on the phone,” you think, “but I just don’t have the energy to list this one-ounce object to my ear.”
Perhaps the most troubling innovation in cellular communication has been the advent of phones that features video games like Pac Man and Tetris. Everyone loves these games; no on in his or her right mind would ever criticize them. But why must they dwell inside our phones?

Overall, phone seem to be adapting to a world where people don’t really want to talk to each other. In a few decades, people will sit on their front porches (which will be digitized by 2023) remembering wistfully the days when people used phones to communicate with other humans.

“Imagine it,” they’ll say. “A day it was easier to communicate one on one than it was to relay your thoughts through the giant emoticon who rules over all of us.”