Head to Head does mobile phones

This week’s topic: That mobile phones are our masters, not our slaves

Andrew Woodhouse
Psst. Are you a twitterer?

I’m not a bird. I do not twitter on my mobile phone.

Mobiles for boys are the new breasts. They lust after these twitter-gadgets hoping for long-term relationships. For girls, twittering mirrors insecurity and a constant need for self-affirmation, a very Cartesian philosophy to me: I twitter therefore I am.

Take my Communications History 101 subject. Stay with me here, please.  In the beginning there was the word. Then words became shouting, thence petroglyphs (rock art), hieroglyphs (symbols), smoke signals, jungle drums, semaphore (flags), morse-code, wireless (radio to you), telegraph, telephone, tele-vision (TV), tele-text, fascimile (fax), computers, internet, mobile phones, e-mail, laptops, short messaging service (SMS text) and now, wait for it, twittering.

This is the history of the world in one paragraph. It’s how we think, speak and act.

Twittering is the new, free social networking, micro-blogging service to send and receive user updates (tweets), up to 140 characters, on users’ mobile phones. You tweet friends or, by default, anybody, anywhere.
Born in 2006, there are now 50 million tweets a month. We’re tweeting and chirping from every branch of our lives like canaries in a tree, on buses, streets, from homes, cafés and cars. It’s great for tracking everyone’s movements via mobiles.

Or is it? Why do I need this trivia? Is this essential?

No, it’s white noise.

There are three isn’ts in life: data isn’t information, which isn’t knowledge, which isn’t wisdom. It isn’t more information we need but better quality.

I’m an IOS sufferer; Information Overload Syndrome. Symptoms include blank stares and interrogatories: ‘What’s the relevance of this gumph?’ and ‘So your point is what, precisely?’ with synchronous eyeball-rolling, yawning and the odd scratch.

We are slaves to our mobile phones, so I’m proposing a bigger revolt than Spartacus waged against the Roman Empire.

The remedy? Blitzkrieg blanket banning, with mobile phone-free days and Culture Police and Council Rangers on street corners issuing on-the-spot fines for those not reading, adoring art, mastering music or lapping up learning.

I’m not foible-free but – I am not a twit.

Peter Whitehead
If only it were so easy to lose a master…. [And a blessing on the rhetorical flight allowing us to trivialize slavery and may we long continue to enjoy the material prosperity afforded by the off-shore suffering of others.]

But, less seriously, who are we this week? What gormless geek cannot apply a firm digit to disable the blinking beeping idiot in his pocket? A phone is a tool. A wondrous one perhaps, a glorious gizmo, a miracle of modern microchippery – but never more than an abject thing no matter how fancy the ring or brazen the bling.

The modern world may be chock-a-block with inadequate excuses but “My phone made me do it” is beneath even the debt-defaulting banks.

And yet… Many of those orders for non-existent pieces of the financial pie did come through mobile phones. Accept the brutal inappropriateness of this week’s metaphorical over-simplification and join in confusing the message with the messenger and the messenger with the message or vice versa either way – it is that little no-brained nag that wakes me up with insistent tones and has me rushing to answer whenever it calls throughout the day. I obey the voices that issue forth.

Aaaaaagh! Whom am I kidding? It is not possible to play the victim of a mindless machine, no matter how popular that pathetic ruse in literature and popular entertainment.

21st century communications networks make us more tightly interconnected than ever before. On a bad day we can be stressed by that and feel at breaking point. But most times we are grateful for the modern miracle facilitating our phoning a friend whenever we are in need – unless it is some overworked cynic at OOO who will not help without a street address.

If the voices on your phone are dictating orders contrary to your best instincts remember the Nuremberg Defense – Befehl ist Befehl – failed. “I was just following orders” got the losers no latitude. You are the master of your own destiny*.

* Some conditions do apply.