Celling Your Soul

This is going to be a curmudgeonly, fruitless rant, further establishing my credentials as a 20th century fossil, but it's my blog, so shut up.

Last week I rode a Supershuttle limo to Dulles Airport. I shared the ride with a woman who was getting increasingly agitated by the molasses traffic patterns. From time to time her cell phone would ring, orchestrally, to keep me awake, as she updated her correspondent as to her progress. At one point she turned to me and said, "What would we do without our cell phones?" My swift reply was, "Well, drive more carefully and bother fewer people." She did not respond, as her resentment was directed toward the horrible commute. A few minutes later, as the van tried to negotiate a difficult intersection, another car ran a light and nearly collided with us. "Look at him!" the other passenger exclaimed, "Idiot! And he's on the phone too!" I could have said "QED," but that would have been obvious, as well as cryptic.

That ride, incidentally, ended with the woman in a near panic about missing her plane. When the limo stopped in front of my terminal first she started barking at me, "Get out! Get out!" like the priest in Amityville.

I haven't yet decided whether the ubiquitous cell phone is a boon or a bane to modern civilization, but I get the sense it causes more problems than it resolves. I personally have little need for one except for emergencies, since I work out of my home. That it enhances connectivity for every working person is a given, and it certainly provides convenience. I also like the pretty blue lights on the dial. But for every benefit it provides, there seems to be a social consequence.

This goes way beyond the irritating yakker in a restaurant or the fool who forgets to turn off the phone during a symphonic concert. The former usually gets enough icy stares to effectively sense contempt, though I did hear recently of one person who asked diners at a neighboring table to lower their voices so he could hear his phone mate. The latter has been somewhat marginalized, though it has become boringly de rigeur for a cell phone announcement to proceed any kind of performance or any indoor public event, including, I'm sure, weddings and funerals. The latest trend to include cameras in phones, now as practically standard features, can be truly helpful in the case of traffic accidents and serendipitous photo ops, but it also entails the potential for an appalling breach of privacy, from locker rooms to bedrooms. Once everyone has a portable camera we have achieved a "1984" sort of universal exposure--something that no law can really effectively curtail.

In a nation that celebrates the individual and gives lip service to privacy rights, the omnipresence of cell phones is causing a sea change in the nature of socialization. Ever since the Internet exploded I have pretty much surrendered any pretense to retaining privacy of information, but now none of us can emerge outside without the potential for some aural and visual invasion of our space. I highly resent this, and perhaps overreact with a scornful glare at anyone whose own supposedly private conversations pollute my public air. I am also frustrated that there is nothing I can do to counter this trend. The cell phone is the major communication device of the first decade of this century, and its applications are certainly likely to expand further rather than retract.

In a recent episode of "The Apprentice," one of the teams researching useful accessories for teen-agers (the team that sent its three members to the finals) discovered that the most important device to that generation was clearly the cell phone--Ipods be damned. Every kid has one, and uses it as a toy (since the parents pay for it), text messaging, e-mailing, net surfing, shapshooting at will, and calling "American Idol" in endless waves. A child without a cell phone is considered a nerdish or hopelessly indigent pariah. This sad attitude is likely to continue through adulthood.

I'm not sure how to put a good or hopeful spin on this, except to buy more stock in Verizon and hope they can get away with charging so much monthly for "In" plans before the competition drives down the profits. Some day soon cell phones are going to totally replace land lines (not a terrible prospect, at least for wire-a-phobes). But also there is looming the Nuclear Option of the Cell Phone generation, the lifting of calling bans during airline flights. That eventuality is one that makes he hopeful that Armageddon is, as our Friends of the Republicans so avidly insist, as quickly upon us.