Since their development in 1973, cellular phones have boomed in mass media, business and especially domestic life. Instantly connecting parents and kids, kids and kids and even parents and parents, the cell phone makes all moments of life quicker and more spontaneous. When given a cell phone number, the receiver is more inclined to call the cell phone than a house phone. Calls stack up like thin mints; the landline is forgotten. As friendships accumulate through calls, the cell phone’s “contact log” becomes the center of one’s social world. Thus is the cellular phone phenomenon.
Cell phones come in all shapes, sizes and now, colors and Internet services. “Yours doesn’t have Bluetooth?” my friend Ben muses, staring blankly at my two-year-old Nokia.
What is Bluetooth? My cell phone doesn’t have Internet; it doesn’t have color. In fact, right now, it doesn’t even have a functional screen. Thanks to the “wall incident,” in which extraction of my four-pound geography tome catapulted my cell phone across the bedroom, there’s an amoebic spread of inky blue blocking the center, making me unable to read text messages or screen my calls.
“You really should fix it,” Ben continues. “You could get a whole new phone, with color, maybe even with buttons that work!” I take out my decrepit phone and dust it off, “But I don’t really need that.” I trail off. Unlike many of my teenage peers, I am content with my old phone, which is now my broken phone. Don’t get me wrong – I’m no antediluvian resisting technology. I just feel that cell phones are supposed to serve two simple purposes: to send out calls and to receive calls. A cell phone runs my social hub. But I can make plans without a hip-top two-way with rhinestones, AIM built into the main screen, color video function and polyphonic R&B ring tones from the latest “TRL.” Without a cell phone, however, I’d have no numbers to call. I’d have nowhere to call from. I’d be lost. My vast array of acquaintances, through whom I find out about parties and get-togethers, would have no way to reach me.
Imagine 80+ people who don’t know your last name. Or maybe they do, but they don’t know your parents or your address. They don’t know or care for your home number, but they contact you frequently. They hit you up on your cell with a “Hey babe! What’s up for tonight?” in a cheery, bubble-bursting tone and, suddenly, you’re cheery too. You’re out with them running around, listening to music, having a good time.
But wait – you have no cell phone! They try to hit you up on your cellie and bam – “This number could not be completed as dialed…” That’s it. Your social life is over. I guess you could still use AIM, but that’s just a hassle. People are usually away all day with messages like, “Out in G-town! Call the cell!” The cell? You can’t call the cell. You don’t have the number! What an insensitive lout. . . .
Now what? Do I sit at home? Read a book? I guess I could catch up on that Hemingway (love his work) on my night table. Or that Nabokov (he rules!) on my dresser. Hmm, maybe Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth,” beckoning me from the couch in the den. Maybe I’ll turn on the TV. Damn, just reruns of “Friends,” which I never watched anyway.
It’s sad, really. Your social life cut off by a device smaller than your hand. By ordinary logic, my social life shouldn’t be cut off by the lack of a cellular phone. It should just become more difficult. Yet the reality is, it’s over. O-V-E-R. I speak from experience. No cell phone? No calls. No friends. They lose patience. They stop inviting and stop reaching out. The plug is pulled in a matter of weeks. Then you might run into them at a party. “Oh hey – you – how are you?” they say, so innocently. You offer a few words; you exchange a hug, a smile. You pass each other in the crowd. You probably won’t see them again.
This is our culture: the culture of the acquaintance. With the introduction of the cell phone (though no one meant any harm), our world has been hurled into a construct of the easy, fleeting friendship. Now that we can contact someone so informally by pressing a button in our digital address books, we are more inclined to do so. A person you might not feel comfortable giving your home number can have your cell. Short calls emerge, then converge into small get-togethers. You see each other again, after meeting each other just once. It is so simple! But are people you connect with this way really your friends?
When you can’t answer your cell phone, your close friends call your house. You can find them if you need to at school, even at their homes. The acquaintances that held up your intricate social life unravel, thread by thread. They weren’t really your friends anyway, they were just tools of technology. They were part of your phone.
Lucy is a freshman in Arts & Sciences. She can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].