Mobile phones - the best invention ever or a source of tyranny?

miec

I was reading an article about Gerry Stembridge in the Irish Times and when I read that he does not use a mobile phone I felt a pang of envy.

I would love to do away with my mobile phone. I know you can switch the phone off etc but it's not the same. I was late getting a mobile phone and resisted for a long time but I realised I needed one when my son was in childcare and I was running late. So I succumbed. For me mobile phones are a source of tyranny: texting (drives me nuts), being contactable all the time, or if you do switch your phone off you miss that all important call, you have to respond back quickly otherwise the other person thinks there is something wrong, the cost, meeting someone (friend/lover/spouse) and they text / talk on the phone whilst meeting you, people driving and using their mobile phones, over reliance on them to organise everything and now they are cameras, music players, connected to the internet, facebook, twitter etc, the general lack of psychological space, how they invade public space and finally a person who does not have one is a social oddity now. Oh and how people now use mobiles to communicate rather than face to face.

Advantages: extremely useful in an emergency situation, a person does not have to wait at home for the phone to ring (e.g. a hoped for date) they can go about their day to day business, instead the anxiety of it is now transfered to the text.

seamus

Any "tyranny" assigned to a mobile phone is utterly in the hands of the person who holds it IMO.

If you view your mobile phone as something which has control over you, then of course it's going to seem like a millstone around your neck. On the other hand, if you consider that you have control over your phone, then it's just another communications tool.

In reality it's no different to having a landline except for portability. If you miss a call, the person will leave a message or ring back. If they don't, then it's not an important call. Same as the landline. If you don't feel like answering it, you don't have to.

If someone thinks that not answering your phone is a reason for concern, then that's their problem. I often ignore calls, and many others I know do too. I have never once found myself concerned that someone else didn't answer their phone.
In the reality the person holding the phone sets the expectation - if you make yourself always contactable, then others will expect it of you. If you don't, they won't.

The human condition is one of social interaction. This is why any new development which makes it easier to contact and be contacted is one that will be leaped upon by people. Mobile Phones, SMS, Forums, Social Networks, Twitter, all of these are innovations that allow you contact your social circle in ways that we had never before seen. In effect, it allows you to be "socialising" all of the time, or at the very least to be socialising even when physical socialising is not a possibility.
As social creatures we lap this up, and the march is unstoppably towards more social interconnection and easier ways of sharing our days and our experiences with the rest of the world. Because that's what humans like to do.

I have no envy for someone who has no mobile phone. If someone finds that having a mobile provides no open avenues for them, adds nothing to their life, then by all means go ahead and throw it away. But for someone to claim that they have no interest in one, without having ever owned one, is no doubt missing the point.
Many people did (and still do) proclaim the internet as useless, pointless, a fad, whatever, even well into this century. "I don't need it", "I don't see the point", "It's waste of time". Proclamations which may well indeed be true for the person, but there's a difference between actually needing something, and deriving great use out of something. Nobody needs a mobile phone, or a car, or a fridge or a toilet. There are alternatives, we can and have survived just fine without.

But it's the life enhancements that these innovations deliver that drive their popularity and acceptance and denying yourself at least the experience of having one because "I don't need it" is to cut your nose off to spite your face, IMHO.

I imagine for every invention in history there have been a long line of traditionalists proclaiming that they "have no need for it", while the rest of the world uses it to enhance their lives.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

I just don't answer calls I don't want to. People get used to it after a while and accept that I'm not a reliable person to contact on the phone.

barry711

I hate them. Mine is always off and I never take it out with me. The only time I ever use my phone is when I'm doing business with someone from the Internet who is buying something from me or selling me something and we need to text to arrange a place and time to meet. Other than that its always switched off and out of credit.

squishykins

I think that they're great, for someone like me. Even though I spend most of my time away now in college, whenever I come home it's like lockdown; I have a very strict dad. Since going to college I don't have any friends where I live any more, so the odd text to my friends keeps me sane over this long summer. Having games and the internet on it is great too since I'm not allowed near a computer or the house phone, I'm turning 19 for crying out loud!

Also great for the usual emergencies and what not, I doubt when I get a place of my own that I'll get a house phone, the mobile is so much handier, the house phone to me would be a wasted bill. I don't see them as a nuisance at all, just a way to stay in touch The trick is to know when to put it away for a while :P

slowburner

Two things I dislike about mobiles - the way people answer them in company as if the phone has priority over the person who is physically present
and
how meetings or prior arrangements get modified by phone calls. It is nice when somebody makes an appointment and sticks to it. It is as if possession of a mobile phone somehow conveys a right to be late or change arrangements. Before mobile phones, it would have to have been a crisis but nowadays, people feel they can explain why they are changing an appointment, rather than just making the effort.

Other than that, I would not be without one.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

slowburner

And remember I.C.E. - in case of emergency. You should prefix your next of kin's number with this ( IceJohn Smith 082 1010100, for example ).Emergency services will look for this number in unfortunate cases where the victim is unable to speak but has a mobile phone.

i5kra

Like all technology the phone itself is neither good or bad - its how we use them that determines our response.

I got my first mobile phone 5 years ago and I can see how my behaviour has changed because of it - I've become a lot less punctual getting to places because I know that I can just send a text and somehow that covers me for being an hour late. Pre-mobile I would always be there on time and because I didn't have a phone other people couldn't contact me and so they always turned up on time. Now the shoe is on the other foot!

As for work mobiles I don't like them at all. I am of the old school that when I'm at home I'm at home. By all means contact me if there's something really urgent/extraordinary that needs to be dealt with asap, but otherwise leave me alone!!!!!!!!

pickarooney

Their importance is vastly over-rated. I don't have one and have never felt I was missing out on anything. I'm rarely more than a couple of hours from a computer or the home phone and am not in a line of work that requires my urgent intervention in anything.

slowburner

pickarooney wrote: »

Their importance is vastly over-rated. I don't have one and have never felt I was missing out on anything. I'm rarely more than a couple of hours from a computer or the home phone and am not in a line of work that requires my urgent intervention in anything.

I am envious. Have you ever considered getting one?

squishykins

slowburner wrote: »

And remember I.C.E. - in case of emergency. You should prefix your next of kin's number with this ( IceJohn Smith 082 1010100, for example ).Emergency services will look for this number in unfortunate cases where the victim is unable to speak but has a mobile phone.

This just reminded me too; I have asthma and suffer from anxiety, so if I didn't have my phone with me at all times I couldn't call for help as easily.

pickarooney

slowburner wrote: »

I am envious. Have you ever considered getting one?

I had one a couple of times after I moved house but they just ended up sitting in a drawer and the number expiring once I got a landline and internet.