For the week of July 2 - 8, 2003

Cell Phones—
Fact and Fancy

Commentary by BETTY BELL

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It used to be that when I saw a toddler I’d chuck his chin, and I’d ask kids carrying bats or rackets how the game went. The kids would look me in the eye and smile when they answered, but today the kids, and rightly so, are trained not only to ignore me but to be ready to run.

I miss that communication, and the sad fact is that not only the children have pulled back, the rest of us have too. When we greeted one another, even if no verbal exchange took place, we’d usually make eye contact and offer a smile or a nod. Along with the loss of casual exchanges we’ve lost a sense of community, I think. Now, as often as not, an approaching Kathy or Karl is talking on an attentively held cell phone, face fixed in that non-focused stare peculiar to cell-phone users, the blank look serving as a virtual "do not disturb" sign. Cell phone users (hereafter called KKs) seem to float along in a bubble, a virtual telephone booth in which privacy is expected and bestowed. So we put on our own non-engaged faces, and as the virtual booth glides past, we pretend we don’t hear a word.

It’s more dicey when KKs are driving. They’re still in their virtual booths, but now the booths are embedded in steel and no longer glide past, and it’s anybody’s guess where those non-focused stares will lead them to steer.

So what’s next, you wonder. It just so happens that I know. I have a copy of the government top-secret "Cell Phone Papers," and while I can’t tell you how that came about, I can tell you they’re scary. They reveal that today’s cell phone is so primitive that you’ll be embarrassed to admit you ever cherished it. And oh, fellow consumers (in a lovelier time we were called citizens), the astounding changes in the cell phone should give you pause.

The Papers reveal that cell phone evolution is the number one priority of those two stellar hawks--John Ashcroft and John Poindexter. John I is the Attorney General, and John II is the retired and pardoned admiral who proves that old admirals never die, they just hang around as spooks. That these two have partnered is no surprise, and no surprise either that they’ve managed to surreptitiously have $3 billion of the itty-bitty 2003 tax cut transferred to cell phone R&D, which they urgently pursue in a top-secret lab embedded deep in the most top-secret part of the Pentagon. The two Johns are giggling these days (try to picture them giggling), because they’ve almost perfected this ultimate cell phone that has morphed into a fool-proof personal surveillance system. The John-Johns dubbed it the Thinkaphone, which sounds benign. It is not--it’s the latest unannounced extension of the Patriot Act. And we consumers are so product oriented, so intrigued with each bit of new technology, that the John-Johns know we’ll herald it as simply the coolest new toy we gotta have.

The Thinkaphone’s name is right-on because thinking is how you activate it. Soon, you’ll be able to toss your archaic model and buy the new dime-sized phone—which is merely a patch that you stick behind your ear, and you simply touch it to turn it on and off. When it’s on, you don’t even have to talk, all you do is think the number you want to call and—voila—you’re connected. And you think your conversation, too. The new phones will be compatible with the old ones for another year or so until even those of us most uncomfortable with "Look, Ma, no hands" can handle it.

What’s to be done with our old non-biodegradable phones is about to become one more serious disposal problem. Locally, I foresee heated town meetings where the city commissioners come to the table already having agreed on a solution, and then Citizen Jake and Citizen Mickey get up and argue for their personal superior and more democratic fix--and that’ll be fun.

The real problem with the Thinkaphone is the very reason it was developed--surveillance. Full time surveillance, fellow consumers, for when you touch your patch to turn it off, it doesn’t really turn off. The Thinkaphone is rigged so that John-John & Company have their own $3 billion switch. They’re never going to be denied access to what’s going on in your head. And though not many of us have secrets that the government needs to know--just visualize all those eavesdroppers in secret cubicles randomly monitoring our patches. Everywhere. In every town and every hamlet. And, oh, the thoughts they’ll be privy to ... they’ll hear every embarrassing wayward bit that flits across our minds. Here’s an example--it’s the most benign one I could find among the myriad that flow through my head every day.

I’m walking down the hall to my P.O. box, and ahead of me is a muscular young guy whose pair of baggy shorts don’t conceal his fabulous butt. And what do you think I think? I think "young man, I give your butt a ten."

You’d think I’d have quit thinking such thoughts years ago, but wayward thoughts still flourish even though they’re wholly inconsistent with the image I try to project. But I’m betting that there aren’t more than a couple of you who don’t have wayward thoughts too.

Luckily, there’s still time for us to stymie the John-Johns. All we have to do is never use a cell phone again--we stash them away until Jake and Mickey figure out how to get them buried at Yucca Mountain or some such place.

Sure, I hear you--it’ll be really hard to give up your cell phone. But you’d better consider the alternative--how hard do you think it’ll be to give up your wayward thoughts?

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.