A Few Minutes with the Mayor – March 2018

I know a young man who was recently visiting who needed to pick-up two weeks of work in order to earn money to return home. When the time came for him to be picked-up and taken to the job, he became flustered because he couldn’t find his cellphone and then decided not to go to work until he found it. Consequently, he didn’t report for work until the following day. In his world, that cellphone was more important than gainful employment.

Cellphone technology has revolutionized our lives! Overnight we have become used to the idea that all communication must be instant. Figures vary depending upon the source, but the average person checks their cellphone 85 times per day. Cellphone “junkies” touch their cellphone more than 5,400 times a day. Though I have trouble understanding their accuracy, these figures are from a research study conducted in July 2016. If true, it would seem we have become slaves to the very same technology that was supposed to improve our lives.

Remember a simpler time? We had a theater of the mind called radio. No cellphones, desktop computers, or even television. There were telephones, but neither my family nor our friends had one, as we were all unable to afford the 2 or 3 dollars a month. We used pay phones at the street corner or neighborhood stores. A local call was a nickel, but even that was a lot when people were buying cigarettes at a penny apiece.

Of course, science and technology have replaced pay phones with cellphones. The slide rule is replaced by the simplest of computers. And newspapers, magazines, and retail stores are under siege from the Internet with ease of at-home online shopping. But to go back? We could no more go back to street pay phones than we could to horses and carriages. Because of technology, we can pick up our cellphone and call almost anywhere, transmit printed information at the push of a button and seek information by simply asking our cellphone a question. Isn’t technology wonderful? Not always! There’s always a downside.

How many times have you left your cellphone somewhere and can’t find it or asked your spouse to call you so you can locate your cellphone? And why is this a problem? Because we have been conditioned to believe we MUST have that cellphone nearby! It might as well be grafted onto our skin.

Then there is the feeling like no other when the thing goes off when it shouldn’t, like in church as mine did, with the Pastor in the middle of a superb sermon.

And the cost for all this delightful convenience? Why, the companies must think our incomes equal that of U.S. Senators! But, like a bad habit, texting and web-surfing grow on us to the point where unlimited use and unlimited charges are the only answer. In 2011 there were 327 million cellphones in America for 315 million people! In 2013 the average Verizon user paid $148 per month. At only $100 per cellphone that comes to 32 Billion and 700 million dollars per month. Per month! Ouch!

Still, I confess, I’m a cellphone junkie and admit I’m not ready to heed those words at the beginning of every Lone Ranger radio broadcast, “Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear.” I’m too busy texting.