The Backflip Boys Weblog

Picture 24 - My Mobile Phone:

Let me make it perfectly clear - I am not a fan of mobile technology. I’m not a Luddite, I just don’t see the need to be connected to the rest of the world on a 24/7 basis. Sometimes, I need to be left alone. Of course, saying that doesn’t alter the fact that I have a mobile phone (my 2nd one in fact) and it looks like this (excuse the crappy quality photo - I need to buy/make a proper light box):

As you can see, it’s relatively primitive but it is only about a year old. My old phone expired and since it is almost impossible to live nowdays without one, I had to replace it but I wasn’t going to go overboard. I only use it to make calls, send text messages and store phone numbers. Forget all the fancy frills like cameras, the internet and radio - I have all of those things at home or in the car.

Seeing people so reliant on their mobile gadgetry, whether it be a phone or a wireless internet connection through their laptop, make me pine for the days of old when the closest phone was the one down the street in the phone booth that may or may not have been working. My family never actually had a phone in the house until I was about 13. If there was no-one there to answer it when it rang, whoever it was would just ring back later if it was important.

I will be the first to admit that the mobile communication revolution has had some profound benefit to the community in general. Parents love being able to let their kids go out knowing they are only a phone call away if they feel the need to pester them and intrude on their lives - thanks to GPS in some models, they can even check up on whether they really are at the library or down the creek smoking with their mates.

One of the oddest things I have witnessed is grown men swapping ring tones as if they were swapping trading cards in the playground at primary school. The good thing about my phone is that it won’t accept any of these multimedia type things. It has a set number of tones (of which I use two - one for calls, one for messages) and forget about sending me the latest photos or videos of your oddly shaped body parts.

It’s a fight I will never win though. I know that somewhere down the track, my style of phone will no longer be available and I’ll have to upgrade to something a little more robust. I don’t look forward to that day but when it comes, I’ll grin and bear it and pretend I’m impressed.

Maybe by then, the iPhone will also have an adapter that will let me download a frontal lobotomy - for 99 cents of course.

Later days.

Trivial fact number 178:- John Paul Getty, once the richest man in the world, had a payphone in his mansion - which explains why he was the richest man in the world.