"I Can Destroy Small Countries With MY Cellphone"

I recently read an article in Fortune about how Nokia is lamenting the fact that Korean companies like LG and Samsung are kicking their ass in the cellphone market, much the way that Nokia kicked Motorola's ass in the '90s. They are hoping new, hipper offerings, like the Nokia 7280 pictured above, will turn the tide back in their favor. Well, I know I'm sold. I've always wanted to own a phone that looks like one of those cheapass Kodak cameras our parents had in the '70s (flashcube not included). It also features no keypad; it has co-opted the iPod's wheel control to do your dialing. And you thought dial phones were dead.

Mentioning the death of the dial phone brings up something else: the somewhat ridiculous notion of actually having a cellphone. Imagine back to when you were a kid, five, six years old. Someone comes up to you and tells you that, in the future, you'll be able to carry a phone with you and make call from wherever you like. You'd probably think this was a pretty queer idea, because who would want to carry a phone around with them? Fast forward 20 years: other than the actual phone, how has this concept changed? Let's say that phone technology had not advanced into the microtechnology or cordless age. Would you carry around a tabletop phone with a corded handset? Probably not, because you'd be carrying around a fucking phone.

Here's the thing that gets me: Cellular phones have been around for 50+ years, yet our parents and grandparents didn't own cellphones when we were younger. Mind you, the technology wasn't as good, and the service was spotty at best. But, the fact remains that if they wanted to carry around a phone, they could have. Maybe they realized, moreso than subsequent generations, the ridiculous notion of carrying around a phone.

Let's think of it another way: if your cordless home phone had a two hundred mile range, would you carry it around with you? I doubt it (I did this once by mistake, and I felt pretty fucking silly when I realized it was in my coat pocket). Yet, you see people at Blockbuster or the supermarket or in their cars talking on these little things the size of a matchstick. Here's the deal: people don't carry cellphones because they need to carry a phone; they carry them because they're small and fun to play with. The fact that it's actually a phone doesn't even enter the equation. Think back to the last time you made or received an urgent call on a cellphone: a call that couldn't have waited or been relayed to an answering machine. I'm betting for a lot of people this is seldom to never. Most calls are of the "Hey, wassup?" or "Well, they got Mean Girls, or..." variety. Can't that kind of nonsense wait until you get home, and not out in public, looking like a moron? I think most people just have cellphones so they can annoy other people by constantly fucking around with the thing. Of course, I may be way off base and totally wrong on all of this, but this is why I started a blog: so I can be a wacko asshole without being put in an institution. Because, honestly, what is insanity, other than a severe difference of opinion with the majority? Think about it.