December 26, 2004
20 years of the mobile phone
The car was first. Then came TV. Now we can't imagine life without mobile phones. Twenty years after the first call, John Arlidge examines how they have changed everything from work to sex for The Guardian. A must read article. Excerpts
"Almost all adults now have at least one mobile phone, one in two teenagers has a 'moby' and a new British firm, Communic8, has just launched MyMo, a simple phone for four- to eight-year-olds. Some 23 billion texts have been sent this year and more than 20 billion calls made. The total value of this electronic white noise is £15 billion.
The spread of mobile phones has been so rapid that Jon Agar, author of Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone and a fellow of University College, London, divides recent British history into 'BC' - the period before cellularisation - and 'AC' now. He points out that the personal computer has been around for almost 40 years and it has still not made it into all our homes, let alone into almost every pocket.
'Like television and the motor car before it, the mobile has created new forms of behaviour, communication and thinking. We get obsessed by being "in touch"; we get stressed by being rung all the time; we flirt more and in new ways; we have created new forms of language; we feel more exposed being alone in public.
Richard Benson's research reveals that mobiles have stretched time and killed what we once called 'dead time'. 'We have become less easy waiting in queues, travelling on public transport or relaxing at home and now can't resist checking our messages, sending one, playing a game or tidying up our address book. Even when we do get a little human contact, the mobile intervenes. Few of us arrange exact times and places to meet. We "approximeet" - calling at the last minute to arrange when and where. Mobiles make time more flexible and elastic.'
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2004/12/006524.htm