Mutant Mobile Mania

MUTANT MOBILE MANIA

James R. Rosenfield

November / December 2003

With cell phones now more common than fingernails, mobile mutants roam our cities, eyes
glazed, attention drawn inwards. The intuitive visual scanning that has hitherto marked the ambulatory human seems to be fading into the past. Is technology changing us from a visual into an aural species? It's certainly changing our public deportment.

A few years back, I was delighted to encounter "mobile free" zones in the airline clubs at Australian airports. Now I've finally seen one in the U.S., at the Delta Airlines club at Laguardia in New York. If only one could set up these zones ad hoc in restaurants, automobiles, and on the streets themselves! What a wonderful world it would be!

Did technology always get ahead of etiquette? I guess the early autos must have whipped up a lot of face dust as they whizzed past horses and buggies. But the ubiquity of cell phones puts them in a different category, one of almost transcendent annoyance. "I am more important than you" is the implicit statement made by the yapper in the restaurant, in the airline terminal, in the - God preserve us all! - men's room, where I've heard conversations emitted from behind the closed doors of locked stalls (and so have you, haven't you?).

The ugliest single sight in the first world is the yuppie wheeling around a corner in his or her SUV, head tilted into the mobile phone conversation. Such a vista inspires me first to defensive self-preservation, and only then to fantasies of violence.

Another big ugly? The group that sits down at a restaurant and places their mobiles in front of them. Is this an announcement of power and importance ("I'm in the middle of a big deal")? I think it's a statement of abject slavery, "I'm at the beck and call of anyone who wants to dial me."

We know from history that technological trends can't be reversed. No Luddite has ever been successful. But they can, theoretically, be worked through. Perhaps with the help of a lot of complaining. If someone next to you in a noisy dim sum place uses a mobile, OK. But it this happens at a fancy restaurant, where I am paying lots of money to be restored (the root meaning, after all, of the word "restaurant") I'm certainly going to complain to the manager when someone decides to turn the Michelin 3-star into her own private gossip gallery.

And what about the people who sneak in that one additional call after the flight attendant announces that all cell phones must be shut off? Is this denial, adolescent rebellion flashed forward into middle age, cluelessness, or simple stupidity? Whatever it is, it makes my finger reach for the call button. If I raise the person's blood pressure as a result, that's fine by me, because mine's been elevated also. I like my plane's navigation system to be functioning at peak efficiency, even on the ground.

And how about those doofus earphone things that make people look like telemarketers, and make it appear that they're talking to themselves if you see them from certain angles? I mean, you have to have the body consciousness of a dog or a tourist in a Speedo to allow yourself to be seen that way. You can save on clothes, I guess. Why wear anything other than too short khakis and flannel short sleeve shirts if you're going to walk around that way.

Do I have a cell phone, you ask? Yes, but no one knows the number (not literally true, but only about five people do). I would rather swallow it than use it in a restaurant or while driving. I find it most handy when I'm driving in France, where I always get lost. I pull to the side of the road, and call the concierge at my hotel, who usually succeeds in guiding me through the thicket of tricky French roundabouts.

It's also quite handy for locating my driver when I arrive at an airport. And it beats standing around looking helpless when your car breaks down (helpless looking middle-aged guys get scant sympathy, it's one of those areas where being a young woman is of singular advantage).

Talking on mobile phones is part of the most pernicious belief-system going around these days, the idea that people can multi-task, and that multi-tasking is good. Therefore it's not only acceptable to talk on the phone while driving, at the risk of your own and other people's lives, but it's also au courant, very, very 21st Century.

But you CAN'T multi-task. The human brain doesn't function that way. What you are doing is quickly switching your attention from one task ("So, Jack, how's the old golf game going lately?") to another ("Whoops, I'm about to wipe out that old lady on the sidewalk with my SUV!!!").

The idea that it's somehow good and useful to multi-task is part of the unending stream of post-industrial capitalist propaganda. We're so busy, we're so important, we're so frazzled, that we have to do a bunch of things at once in order to survive. And in order to reap the richest possible rewards for our corporate masters.

What absolute nonsense, although I would be the first to admit that I practiced this kind of nonsense for many, many years. I would read while listening to music because there wasn't time to do them both separately. Of course, you're either listening to the music or reading. You cannot do both at once. And you are doing neither with the kind of attention that either the music or the book requires.

Multi-tasking, in fact, is an implicit statement that the quality of your life doesn't matter. Quality of life has long been a questionable value in the U.S. A country that has given McDonald's to the world cannot be accused of quality. But U.S. style multi-tasking, through the insidious and irresistible mechanism of mobile phones, has now taken over the world. The person sitting at a sidewalk café in Buenos Aires just a few years ago would peruse the newspaper or stare moodily into the distance. Now she feverishly talks on her mobile.

Mobile phones rob us of privacy, and rob us of leisure. The salesperson in New York on a radiant autumn day a few years back would walk the corporate corridor of mid-town Park Avenue from appointment to appointment letting his mind wander a bit, getting mentally refreshed between meetings. Now he punches his mobile, getting messages, confronted with problems and worries that could easily be postponed for a while.

Back to the sheer havoc wreaked by clueless cell phone users: There are two potential solutions, legal and social.

Legal: a law was passed in New York forbidding cell phone use in cars. It's not a law that's very well enforced, but at least it's on the books, so it's a start. Another law was passed mandating a fine of $50 for cell phone use in museums, theaters, and other cultural venues. Museum guards in New York, some of them nodding off from their latest drug overdose, ignore this, but will respond if you point out an offender. It would be helpful if museums posted signs suggesting you turn off the mobile. That's what they do in London, a suggestion that is quite well enforced by the museum guards there.

Social: pinheads who annoy others through obnoxious cell phone use are also likely to be scofflaws. That provides an argument in favor of social shaming: Most people, including pinheads, will crumble under a certain weight of shame. As I mentioned earlier, I think it's incumbent upon any civilized person to complain about cell phone use in a fancy restaurant. This doesn't necessitate a confrontation with the offender. Speaking to the manager should be sufficient to precipitate at least an iota of shame.

I had the pleasure of witnessing the ameliorating impact of social shame in New York recently. I was in a crowded bus going down Fifth Avenue. A roaring cell phone conversation unleashed itself from the back of the bus. It was an older guy making his theater plans for the evening, and sharing them with his fellow passengers. A woman standing next to me and I exchanged glances, and then began shouting "LOUDER! LOUDER!" Soon everyone in the bus looked at the mobile mutant and joined in the shout. He shut up in a hurry, and will probably think twice about his cell phone behavior in the future.