(Martha Rosenberg)
“There’s a fire on the tracks and fire crews are on their way,” said 40 people into their cell phones.
“Please remain in your car until further instructions.”
“We’re remaining in our car until further instructions,” said 40 robot cell phoners.
Imagine life without the cell phone relay system—especially during an emergency. People might talk to their seat mates and say things like—”Are your feet getting as hot as mine?” or “Should we open the emergency exit doors for air?”—instead of talking to the people who know them as “Hi, It’s me.”
Recently, pedestrians and motorists witnessed a near-miss accident in Chicago’s Loop. An SUV, its driver blathering while trying to turn right, almost mowed down a pedestrian chattering into her hand. Screams were heard, fists were shaken, but neither the driver or pedestrian missed a beat in telling their cells phones, “You know what a &%$@ idiot just did to me???”
Of course neither hung up.
Nor are drivers and walkers the only demographic hopelessly devoted to their cell phones.
Raise your hand if you’ve been on a lunch date—or real date—and found yourself competing with a 1-inch screen for “immediacy.”
Moms—imagine bidding your kids goodbye and not hearing from them via the electronic apron string until dinner time? That’s what your mom did! Imagine getting one letter a month from your college kid instead of daily calls for wardrobe and dorm roommate consults?
Thanks to cells, everyone is an independent communication substation, transponding orientation information to the next substation, which—surprise!—transponds back, content and message optional.
The insipidness of real-time reporting, whether on cell phones or news, was described by former Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Green when the Southwest plane he was flying on had an inflight navigation emergency in 2005 and had to return to Midway Airport.
“We landed, to the audible relief of those on board, pulled up to the gate, and—before the captain could tell us what had gone wrong—four people entered through a Jetway. One held a television camera; another began handing out release-permission forms,” wrote Greene in the New York Times. They were from a reality-TV show.
While the “what’s-it-like-to-almost-die” coverage didn’t please the TV crew—no panic attacks or missed wedding days, huffed the producer—some passengers welcomed the electronic documentation because it made the moment “realer,” says Greene.
Cell phones are called the neocigarette because of their ubiquity and health dangers like car wrecks, germs, and even brain tumors, but the legions of “chain callers” prove they are addictive too.
Why else would they end up in so many toilets? (Who remembers when public washrooms were silent instead of echoing with “stall chatter”?)
They are so addictive, Roman Catholic bishops in Italy suggested people take a high-tech fast and give up their cells for Lent.
But no one would.
It’s not that people don’t want to sacrifice for Lent. After all, they give up meat, coffee, chocolate, playing the ponies, and the river boat. It’s just if they gave up their cell … who would they tell it to?
Martha Rosenberg is a writer living in Chicago.