Sunday, September 07, 2008





Neal Stephenson Explains What's Wrong with Mobile Phones

What's intriguing is that Stephenson is saying mobiles suck not just because of their interfaces, but because of how people act when they use mobiles. Of course, how people act with cell phones has everything to do with the interface. You have to stick them against your face, or put some weirdass Cyberman-looking thing in your ear. So your body language, when you're on a mobile, makes you immediately seem rude to anyone around you.

Plus, most people still use audible ringers (as opposed to vibration), so it is essentially impossible to have a mobile without inviting a noisy, irritating interruption. What that means is your mobile doesn't just interrupt your train of thought or conversation -- it interrupts everyone's within earshot. So the mobile as we know it is perhaps one of the worst attention-shattering devices imaginable.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

... and video games are destroying our youth, on and on...cut the crap, we don't need electronic devices in order to be rude. We can be very rude with or without them.

Michael

Anonymous said...

Yeah, we knew that. It would have been interesting had he proposed some alternative.

Mac said...

We can certainly be rude without electronic assistance, but, in my experience, cellphones sure as hell don't help matters. I mean, have you *seen* people in public places? It's as if everyone has become suddenly schizophrenic. I'm not anti-cellphone, but I think chronic users need to take a step back and observe themselves from a healthy distance.

Tony F. said...

I've actually been living without a cell phone for the past two months now, and doing just fine without them. You just make sure all the important people in your life know you don't have one, and things go just fine. This doesn't mean I don't want one (I do), but I've come to love the idea that I don't have this mobile, cellular fetus following me everywhere, acting like a homing beacon for anyone who wants to talk to me. Maybe it's the recluse in me expressing itself, but in the age of connectivity, something like non-connectivity reminds me that the whole cell-phone thing is largely a consumer-driven ideology and that humans, not the machines, still have the power.

Mac said...

No one knows my cell # but a very small group of people. Happily, it rarely rings. I use it primarily as an "emergency" phone (and of course for the camera). All in all, it's useful, but something I could live without.

Anonymous said...

But Mac, were all chronic users of something. The cell phone has become more than just a device we use when we need it. It's become a part of the next world, a world of complete connectivity. Call it an early training device preparing the way.

Look at Twitter. What is Twitter other than yet another level of communication. A constant, at least for some, feedback of random thoughts and play by play of what's going on in or with their lives.

Soon we'll all be able to broadcast live video transmissions twenty four hours a day if that's what we want to do. I for one would be happy not to have to tap out text messages on ever smaller alpha numeric pads. It's much easier to walk and talk.

No, I think the cat's out of the bag and it ain't goin back in. You can yearn for the good old days, but they weren't that good. We'll continue to expand our connectivity and at times that may feel uncomfortable, perhaps even rude to those still riding horses, but inevitable and unstoppable non the less.

Besides, the definition of rude is relative. What one person, or even a group might find rude, others might find perfectly acceptable. Sort of like obscene.

Michael

Anonymous said...

Y'know, I keep thinking it's a sad day for techno-utopians anywhere when Twitter and text messaging are held up as the ushers of a new golden age of human connectivity. I see it the other way. Cell phones and Twittering don't bring anyone closer to anything--they DISconnect people from their immediate surroundings, themselves, and the people around them. That's why so many people behave rudely in public while using them.

Moreover, can anything meaningful be communicated in a text or Twitter post? 99% of what's said through those mediums is static noise. They aren't preparing anyone for anything shy of an Orwellian destruction of language where words and thought are replaced by bastardized blurbs.

Minirant out of the way, I think public spaces ought to restrict cell phone use, sort of like smoking. There's no real reason anyone should be on the phone during a movie, or at dinner, or in a bookshop or in the park or wherever. Certainly emergencies happen and sometimes we need to ask someone for quick information, but there's something to be said for wandering away from the crowd and being discreet--if only for privacy. I've overheard too many things shouted into a cell in public that I didn't really need or want to know.

A Gnawed-Kneed Mouse

Anonymous said...

Sorry if any techno-utopian sensibilities have been offended. Perhaps only literary giants should have access to pencil and paper so as to drown out the babble of the rabble.

"In the park or wherever." I would agree that having paid for a movie I have the right expect a certain experience without the obvious intrusion of cell phone conversations. The same might hold true for dinner, but I think the "park or wherever" is a bit overly restrictive. Since when do we need a "real reason" to talk to friends or family? Maybe only those with something meaningful to communicate should be allowed a communication device or should even be allowed to speak. I think there would be a deafening silence.

Michael

Mac said...

I see great potential in cellphone and "social networking" technologies, but if "connectivity" comes at the expense of treating the people in one's immediate vicinity as if they were little more than annoyances to be shunned and ignored, then I choose not to participate.

That said, I also refuse to let the morons ruin everyone's fun, even if they're an apparent majority.