(Early in my career in public relations, I found I had a talent for making complex technologies understandable to a broader audience. I expect there is a book hidden in the recesses of my mind that can help people deal with the complexity of the communications age in which we are so lucky to live. Until I sit down and write it, you will have to settle for these scattered blogs to answer your questions.)
There is a corollary to that fictional Chinese curse saying: ‘May you live in interesting times.’ It is:‘May you come to the attention of those in authority.’ And, according to a whimsical contributor to Wikipedia, there is a second corollary: ‘May you find what you are looking for.’ All the sayings seem to come together to focus attention on our concerns with the communication age. Just think for a minute about cell phones.
Things electronic have always fascinated me. I have always been an early adaptor of new technologies. I had a car telephone long before they became a nuisance on our highways. That first telephone was a full sized home phone from Bell Canada that sat on the console of a large four-door Mercury. The many boxes of equipment that made it work filled the car’s spacious trunk and the whip antenna, rising from the middle of the trunk, was over two metres long. There were just eight frequencies available in the Greater Toronto Area, for the thousands of people so equipped. You fought for a line.
Getting a line was only your first problem. There was no privacy. I remember repeatedly trying to get a Globe and Mail reporter to stop reading to me to check a story that would be front-page news the next morning. There could have been hundreds of people on the line getting the inside scoop without us being able to tell. I thought I was really on to something with that phone until I met a limousine driver who had two lines; one phone was a convenience for his customers. Analysis of calls on that radio telephone revealed that most calls were to tell people you were stuck in traffic and would be late to a meeting. I discontinued the phone next time I changed cars.
The first cell phone was another disappointment. It was built-in and hands-free for convenience but it still took up a third of the trunk of the sporty car that had replaced the larger Mercury. It was such new technology that the telephone company should have been paying me to find all their dead spots in the city. At that time, you were best to park if you were going to have a long conversation. Mind you I really found out who among the people I talked to on the phone were long-winded. At so much per minute, I started to tire of some of the conversations.
The first truly portable cell phones were awkward beasts that came with a carrying strap to throw over your shoulder. The first couple arriving at a restaurant put their beast on the table so that their friends could update them on how far they were away. And then the phones became so small, we were constantly losing them.
With the rise of the Blackberry and iPhone, the multi-media era of the communications age has landed on platforms that can handle the phenomenon. Someone had already reasoned that cell phones would be even more useful if they sported a digital camera. That made them useful and ubiquitous. What surprised everyone about the Blackberry and other texting-ready cell phone devices was the number of adults so willingly typing on tiny Qwerty keyboards with their thumb nails.
Texting has certainly quieted down the incessant noise of cell phones but it is also destroying the use of written language. Our spelling is becoming atrocious, the grammar appalling and some of the abbreviations leave the communication in doubt. The sight of people around a meeting table who all look like they are playing with their genitals, is the phenomenon of people texting others while supposedly paying attention.
But, no matter how sophisticated the device, the essential message remains the same as that of Lewis Carroll’s white rabbit: ‘I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date.’ Were we always so self-important?
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