I could walk down the street—any street, for that matter—in any village, town, or city, in any country and on any continent, and all I would see are people “clutching” their mobile telephones. What is wrong with this picture?
As a youngster, at the leading edge of the baby boomer explosion, I was raised in a home that had one rotary-dial telephone set, which sat on a second-floor hallway table. There was a phone number that started with two letters, followed by five digits. Today, phone numbers have at least ten digits… and no letters.
Ask a youngster to describe a rotary-dial phone and you will get a blank look. A similar blank look occurred the other day when my wife made a small purchase at a neighbourhood convenience store and asked the cashier for change in “quarters.” The cashier looked at her blankly and replied, “What’s a quarter?” I am quite serious.
My parents, three siblings, and myself—well, actually two siblings, as my youngest sister was only about six years old and did not receive or make many phone calls—shared this one phone. As you can imagine, my two older sisters were the more frequent users.
In the mid to late 1950s, wall-mounted phones were introduced and shortly thereafter, Princess phones—stylish, and any colour you wanted as long as it wasn’t the basic Bell black. Much like early Model T Ford cars, the only colour common to both telephones and those cars was black.
You may recall that the earliest mobile phones, I think introduced by Motorola, were large, bulky, heavy, and performed only two functions: permitting the holder to place a call or receive a call. It wasn’t long before some engineering types developed what we today call the smartphone. Considerably smaller in size and subject to increasingly frequent upgrades, these phones introduced an entirely new way to communicate with others; to store and send information; to store and receive information; and, in general, to render the residential landline phone almost obsolete. True, businesses still used them, but more as an intercom service than anything else.
Today’s mobile smartphones are essentially computers, with far greater storage and processing power than the room-sized behemoths that IBM and others produced in the 1950s and ’60s. One can call, receive calls, conference call, text, take photos, search entire encyclopedias, arrange appointments, listen to music, read books, listen to podcasts, shop, sell and/or trade stocks and merchandise, and perform all kinds of research—just to touch on a few of the options available to us.
What owning mobile phones has done—and there are billions of phone owners and billions of phones out there—is create an entirely new lifestyle and method of communication. To the extent that individuals appear to feel threatened and uneasy if they are not constantly holding a phone, or at least have immediate access to one. Even engaging in face-to-face verbal conversation seems to be becoming a lost art. People prefer the more impersonal method of communication, where one is not necessarily obliged to respond or answer immediately—or ever, for that matter.
I challenge each and every one of you reading this to become aware of your surroundings. Whether it be a waiting room, public transit, a university or even a high school classroom or lecture hall, or simply walking down the street, perhaps 90% of the people you see are clutching or holding a cellphone, or at least have one stuck in their back pocket.
Furthermore, it strikes me that almost everyone I know—or don’t know, for that matter—seems consumed with using their phones. What is the constant urgency to be in contact, to look at photos, to share photos, to follow everyone’s exploits on social media, and in some cases, to have several calls each day with the same family members?
When I entitled this particular Chronicle, the word “addiction” came to mind—where there is a physiological cause that manifests itself, whether the addiction involves tobacco, alcohol, narcotics, or even some types of foodstuffs. Addicts can be treated, but not always successfully. Obsession, on the other hand, strikes me as more of a mental or psychological obstacle, where an individual is unable to reconcile the difference between desire and need. This might be a bit of a stretch from someone who has never even taken Psych 101. My apologies to those who have.
In the pre-industrial era, handwritten letters were sent and often took weeks, maybe even months, to reach their final destination, and of course the same length of time for replies. The advent of more scheduled post delivery, such as the Pony Express and then telegrams, reduced the time it took for contact—from days to hours—and with exponential technological advances, communications are now instant. How did we manage for millennia without instant communication, and have we been psychologically impacted when instant communication and/or constant contact is taken away from us, even if only temporarily?
Perhaps the most confusing aspect of cellphone addiction is watching four people dining out at a restaurant, with all four individuals communicating on their cellphones—but presumably not with each other.
Will we, as humans, ultimately lose the capacity and ability to verbally express ourselves? Maybe, or maybe not. Universities, in an attempt to forestall AI-generated submissions of essays and papers at all levels, are now using anti-AI software to identify and reject such submissions and are seriously entertaining the idea of forcing students to present or defend their work orally to ensure originality.
I am wandering a bit afield here, so back to phones for a moment.
Imagine, if you will, your grandparents or great-grandparents and how they might react if thrust into today’s world of high-speed electronic communication. How would you—or better yet, how could you—explain that the entire contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica could be condensed into the memory of today’s smartphones? Well, maybe it can’t; I am not entirely current on memory capacity. How would you then go on to explain that you can conduct all of your banking transactions, file your income tax, apply for a driver’s licence, buy groceries, plan trips… and on and on it goes.
My biggest concern, folks, is what the next 25 years will bring, and whether any of us of a prescribed demographic will be able to understand new technology any better than our great-grandparents could understand ours. Since the rate of development has increased exponentially, maybe 25 years is not realistic at all—perhaps ten years will suffice.
I leave it with you. For all of the benefits that smartphones afford us, have we, as the animal world’s leading and supposedly most intelligent species, started heading down a path that will ultimately lead to our irrelevance? AI has already shown that robots will very shortly replace humans in performing simpler, lower-end tasks, and in a world that changes in nanoseconds, our days of relevance may be numbered.
Back to smartphones for a moment… Any chance we can simply set them aside, even for a designated period of time, so that we can enjoy our confrères, nature, and life—without the desire, or in many cases the desperate need, to remain electronically in touch?
Just asking.
Allan Schwartz is a 79 year-old retired Canadian entrepreneur who spent decades owning and operating a successful manufacturing company specializing in stainless-steel food service, medical and laboratory equipment. After selling the business, he spent some 5 years as a Business Broker before shifting his attention to writing during the Covid years. Married for 56 years, he is the proud father of adult children and grandfather to five and continues to enjoy exploring new interests in his retirement.
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