On this day fifteen years ago, Year of Our Lord 2009, when FPR was but seven months old and I, doubtful it could last a year, was dutifully providing “content” each Wednesday (because site meters must spin), I opined correctly—for who would opine incorrectly? That would be stupid—I opined correctly that cell phones are “utterly pernicious.”
The comment box, also pernicious, absorbed nearly seventy comments.
That piece was titled “The Final Word on Cell Phones.” It has been “private” for many years, as have the two essays it “linked.” I make all three of them public for the occasion of this anniversary piece, which I expect total dissent from—which is why I have turned off the comments. I don’t care what people who are wrong think.
But I was right then (even though in the first four years of FPR I was mostly playing the smartass—because site meters must spin) and I am right now: right in the main, I mean. If there ever comes a true accounting of the costs we’re racking up for making, using, and discarding our mobile (de)vices, we will be obliged to admit that there has been no net gain. The withdrawals from the account exceed the deposits in both number and in sum.
I am tempted to say that “using” is the apex of that otherwise equilateral triangle, but we’ll need long-term data on making plus using and discarding. This isn’t a COVID vaccine, after all. For long-term data there must needs be a long term, not the mere repetition of comforting Right-Think and Wish-Speak. I expect the making and discarding will accord with our general economic practice, which is to use the world up in making things and to poison it in throwing them away.
That bears repeating: our general economic practice is to use the world up in making things and to poison it in throwing them away. So much for tending and keeping the garden.
As for “using” these little damnable things: do I not have two eyes in my head? It’s been fifteen years, and the evidence that I was right mounts rather than vanishes. But who, having taken all those calculated dopamine hits all these years, will notice? In “Reach Out and Text Someone” (March 2009) I mentioned Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. It’s a book of outdated examples but timeless wisdom. Go back and read Postman’s intro. He argued that Huxley was right, not Orwell. It’s not what we fear that will undo us; it’s what we love. And we love our (de)vices.
But who is there to tell us that our loves are disordered?
I leave aside the damage that abstract means of communication have done to social and political lives. I leave aside what a great casualty these means have made of civility, which is not a sufficient but is certainly a necessary good.
Okay, I don’t leave them aside. Nor do I leave aside the panic that sets in when battery power is low and the charger—or, worse yet, an outlet—is nowhere to be found. “I’m almost out of power! Where is my charger?”
My question is: can anyone actually live this way? Honestly, I don’t know how people put up with all this this shit. And when I am sometimes asked for my cell phone number and then confess I don’t have a cell phone, and when I am then regarded as a freak of nature for not having this summum bonum with me all the time in case someone needs to get a hold of me, I feel compelled to say, as I almost invariably do, that there are no confirmed reports of ice skating in hell, so, no, I don’t have a cell phone and won’t be getting one any time soon.
For a long time I did not regard this as a sign of moral superiority, but you who are addicted to these evil gadgets are not helping my already heightened sense of moral superiority. It is well that my moral standing is usually pretty low, because all around me I find evidence that I should feel pretty damn good about myself. And that’s the last thing I need.
But I think the evidence demands a verdict, and I think the evidence and verdict are both in my favor. I’ll allow that, were I, say, a contractor, I’d be S.O.L. if I didn’t have a cell phone. Same goes for other people in other businesses. But did not contracting and other business thrive before the arrival of this pernicious (de)vice? And could they not thrive again? Clearly they could. A woman once told me she couldn’t live without her salad spinner. But what was she doing before she got her salad spinner? Mouldering in the grave?
I have a salad spinner. The one I have was given to me as a wedding gift by the aforementioned woman. That was more than thirty-eight years ago. Both she and I were living before the invention of the salad spinner and will go on living with or without it. All she did was give voice to the techno-addict, whose voice I would like to give a name to: addict.
I like my outdated salad spinner and still use it. I could also live without it. People with cell phones could live without them. I think they would be happier without them.
I know a lot of people. They are all cell phone owners. They are not happier than I am.
At some point scarcity will tell us something about all the things we will have to do without. Mark me: that day is coming. You who are addicted to vices made from limited resources will have an addiction to deal with. Meantime, I recommend restraint. I recommend a phrase Eve might have made good use of: no, thanks.
