A cell phone? Never for me

Answers included.

1- Someday soon, I may be the last man in America without a cellphone. To those who see cell phones as progress, I say: they aggravate noise pollution and threaten our solitude. The central idea of cellphones is that you should be connected to almost everyone and everything at all times. The trouble is that cell phones assault your peace of mind no matter what you do.

2- Cell phones, like other triumphs of the mass market, have reached point when people forget what it was like before they existed. No one remembers life before cars, TVs, air conditioners, jets, credit cards, and microwave ovens. So, too, now with cell phones. Anyone without one will soon be classified as a crank.

3- Look at the numbers. In 1985, there were 340213 cell phone users. By the end of 2003, they were 159 million. for adults among those 60 to 69, cell phone ownership is 60%. It is almost as high as among 18 to 24 year-olds which is 66%. According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, even among those 80 and older, ownership is 32%.Of course, cell phones have productive uses for those constantly on the road: salesmen, real-estate agents, repair technicians, managers and reporters.

4- Cell phones make driving more than dangerous. The Harvard center for risk analysis blamed them for more than 6% of auto-accidents each year, involving more than 2600 death.

5- Private conversations have gone public; we have all been subjected to someone else’s conversations. In 2003, cell phone conversations totaled 830 billion minutes. The average conversation lasts 2,5 to 1 minutes.

6- Cell phones keep company to people, however there are folks who have cell phones but often wish they didn’t. A recent poll asked which invention people hated most but couldn’t leave without. The answer was cell phones. Cell phones and all wireless devices pretend to increase your freedom while actually stealing it. People devoted to staying interconnected are kept in a perpetual state of anxiety because they may have missed some significant bit of news.

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