MOBILE PHONEMANIA

I walked on down the high street both sides were various branded phone shops tempting me to buy the latest internet ready/camera/mp4 player/mobile phone with more minutes per month than I could use in a year. Everywhere people were sitting in bars, cafes, walking down the street, all with phones pressed against their ears. Some of them with blue tooth looking like they are talking to themselves in public.

Had the world gone mad?

I remember back in the days walking down the street with a mobile was practically advertising that you was a drug dealer. For a while people thought pagers were the swish thing, Remember that added bulge to your jeans pockets. However they soon switched from risking testicular cancer to the more fashionable perils of brain tumours and ear frying.

Mobile phones are probably one of the best examples of how technology can change the nature of social interaction, even how we see the world. Try watching movies made before 1998 and you'll see a hundred different plots that would never have arisen had someone been carry a mobile phone. Godzilla is stalking you in the lake district, you get to the car, there's a puncture? Call the AA get cover they will have you out of there in 1 hour.

Another example: Call round to see a friend by chance and watch the expression of shock on their face as they open the door - 'but, but you didn't give us a call!' Did we really spend that much time locked out or lost or just plain hanging around in silence? I mean, I don't remember waking up every day wishing for someone to invent portable communication.

Mobile phones are obviously excellent inventions that save lives and boost your social life if you don't spend much time at home anyway. In theory you can turn them off, if you want some privacy or be like the Japanese who have them set only on vibrate so that they won't offend anyone. Like any technology, if used responsibly there's no problem.

The point being that the way we use mobile phones just makes visible our neurotic tendencies like scratching a pencil over a drawing in wax.. We were always this nervous and insecure. Only now we have the device to play with in public and stroke when no one is looking.