Mobile Computers
Even as I am just sitting here typing on my computer my cell phone is less than feet away from me. I bet that even as you are reading this no matter whom you are you could most likely say the same thing about the location of your mobile phone. That is if you own one. What you might not realize is that this phone has a certain control over you. This really applies to everyone in the nation who is apart of a contract with a cell phone company. These contracts or plans seem to be the heart of this epidemic.
Just because we can go into a store and buy a little device with a bunch of cool buttons and all sorts cool features does not make it a phone. We have to sign a contract stating that we will pay so much money to have our phone activated within the network to call anyone we may possibly want. Or at least the people that we are aloud to without having to pay extra than what we have originally agreed to in our plan.
That’s the funny thing about contracts. They put so many limitations on who we can and can not talk to. Promotions such as free nights and weekends, and free calling to only the people in your network, circle, or favorites, are just a few restrictions that people usually fall for because they put the word free in front of it. Say you have free nights and weekends but your friend works on nights and weekends, when are you going to call your friend? It is quite possible that you may have to give up valuable minutes during the day time, or maybe you’ll text that person while they are at work. If this isn’t possible then you better hope your friend is in your top five or at least in your network or else you are going to pay.
Either way it seems like it is going be a very short conversation. Text messaging is another very funny thing. Text messaging has almost taken over the entire purpose of cell phones in the first place. It makes every conversation so much less personal and as a society I feel like this is the answer to our prayers. Why should any of use ever have to call one another and hear each others voices and pretend that we care more than what we really do. Also why should we have a longer conversation than what we have actually intended when we can send each other short typed out messages within seconds. Here in America it has always been about efficiency and speed. As far as I am concerned the text message has gone beyond our wildest dreams. However this makes all of our relationships with each other become less important. Is this really what we really wanted our outcome to look like?
But wait, now we have to pay for minutes and text messages? Sound like our bill just doubled. You just got to have it though and it doesn’t just stop at talking and text messaging. Saying that this thing that we continually call a cell phone is a phone is almost an insult, good thing for us that mobile phones don’t have feelings(at least not yet anyways. Most of these so called phones come standard with a built in camera, navigation system, Wi-Fi, Mp3 player, live television, calculators, calendars, clocks, stop watch, and so much more depending on what model you buy. Once you get all of this going then you can purchase even more ring tones, games, music, and so much more. Eventually when it all comes together that’s when you start to realize that you have got one of the worlds smallest computers right there in you pocket.
By now these little computers are sounding really cool. However, don’t forget that somebody has to pay for all that which leads us back to our contract. Cell phones have made us all a mess. The connections we make control us in almost every aspect of our everyday life and if it is a cell phone that is connecting us then we are stuck. If its not who and when we talk to people, its where and why. If it is not what and where we do things its when and why they occur. We are forever trapped in our digital world. Then again you know what they say, you’ve made your bed and now you have to sleep in it.