Can We (Not) Talk
MI6 agent James Bond (played by Pierce Brosnan) made his first on-screen cellphone call in the 1997 movie, Tomorrow Never Dies. I need to get a hold of that phone. The handset outfitted by the wacky Q Branch contained fictional extras such as a fingerprint scanner and remote control for 007’s BMW. But it’s the stun gun feature that interests me most. Why? Because the FCC is considering lifting a decades-old ban on cellphone use on airplanes. If that should happen, I pity the chatterbox sitting next to me.
Two things quickly come to mind:
1) Is there anything more boring than listening to someone else’s phone conversation?
2) If you can’t find peace at 35,000 feet, where do you suggest one goes?
I’ve forgotten a lot of things over the years, but one thing I remember vividly is the first time I saw someone using a cellphone. I was sitting in the back of a cab in D. C. when a young woman in a power suit walked across the street talking on a phone with an aerial and no wall plug in sight.
What the heck…?
It was the coolest thing I had ever seen and little did I know that someday I, too, would wear a power suit and walk and talk and trip and slam on the brakes with my own portable phone in hand.
I liken the use of cellphones to an (acceptable) addiction with no cure.
Have we really reached the point where life is what happens when your cellphone is charging?
Today it’s hard to imagine not having this albatross at-the-ready. But it wasn’t that long ago that we all lived happily without it.
The first mobile telephone call was made on April 3, 1973 by Martin Cooper, a former Motorola inventor, who is known as "the father of the cellphone.”
When Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, made his first call on March 10, 1876, his first words to his assistant, Thomas Watson, were “Mr. Watson – come here – I want to see you."
Lovely.
Mr. Cooper wasn’t nearly as charming when he made his first call from Sixth Avenue in New York.
He rang up the boss of a rival manufacturer who was left speechless when he realized someone else beat him to the development of a portable, hand–held device.
Cooper would later recall, "There was silence at the other end of the line. I suspect he was grinding his teeth." (And I suspect that was the last time there was any silence on the other end of a mobile phone).
The phone Cooper used weighed about two pounds and it had a “brick-like battery” that took 10 hours to charge (for 30 minutes of conversation). The LED display could dial up any one of 30 phone numbers.
Hilarious, right?
Not so funny was the cost of the first cellphone offered commercially in 1984: $3,995.
Talk then was anything but cheap.
But today is seems as if talk is too cheap.
It’s also ubiquitous (327,577,529 mobile phones in play in the US alone). And phone chatter has become rude, intrusive, and possibly soon, an in-flight annoyance.
For the life of me I don’t understand why someone wouldn’t want to be unreachable on an airplane. It’s such a rare treat.
Fifty-nine percent of American voters agree with me (30% haven’t heard I may be packing a James Bond phone).
The Association of Flight Attendants is apoplectic about the proposed ruling. If you think they all look crazed now and ready for retirement, just wait.
So Pray for Peace.
If only in-flight.
