In the late 1990s they began to percolate around the globe. I first saw the change in Barcelona -- people gabbing on the fly. By 2001, American community college students were flocking outside to chat up little teapot tempests in between classes. Since then, students of all ages have been grasping on to mobile phones like good luck charms -- everywhere. Now we all are, or damned near almost all.
This techno-cultural fact duly noted, how have we changed in our thinking and attitudes, our strategy and our tactics in the past ten or twelve years? And as we wing forward, what's there waiting for us up ahead?
Mobile phone, cellphone, le téléphone mobile. Spy cameras for everyone!
Holograph, hologram, o recording angel where art thou?
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.*
*The Odyssey, Robert Fagles translation, 1996.
"Almost everyone uses a cellphone, but it is still an object of mystery." -- Guy Klemens, The Cellphone (2010).
Gone mobile, what message do ye bring to your own future?
Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.
3 comments:
I don't know how we ever got by before we could check in on foursquare.
DId you ever read Stephen King's "The Cell?" Great horror novel involving cell phone proliferation.
Can't really imagine a world without them anymore.
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