Rant on Cell Phones

The topic of phenomenology in regards to technology, especially the idea of embodiment, struck me during last class meeting.  It's a cool idea when it comes to a blind person using a cane as a sort of antenna, but I find it alarming the the cell phone has become an extension of almost everyone's fingers, ears, and eyes.

The cell phone is an extension of our digits just in how we manipulate the keypad while texting.  While not able to perform the phenomenon myself, I've seen how quickly people are able to manipulate this horrid system of communication--instead of twenty-six letters, you know have ten digits, and using proper timing, are supposed to string together entire sentences?  Not to mention what texting is doing to our language, just on a linguistic level.  When you begin using acronyms in place of words, grammar just becomes completely superfluous, and we forget how to spell the words we're abbreviating.  Yeah, it's cool on medical dramas: "Quick, we need 15 CCs of plasma for this GSW!" (Isn't it easier just to say gunshot wound?) but if texting becomes the predominant mode of communication, the English language is sure to suffer, as I think it already has.

As for cell phones becoming our new ears, the obvious reason of communication, but music, as well?  No music will ever sound good coming out of a cell phone, period.

And eyes: this is perhaps the most disturbing element.  Cameras on cell phones.  I'm not sure who came up with the idea to stick a sub-par digital lens on a cell phone, but I really think it puts an odd, we are having fun so we need to record this vibe on everything.  I mean, photographs used to be kind of special things to me--I still have a few 3x5 color glossies which I have emotional attachment to.  There's just not that sort of feeling around photographs anymore, and I think it's thanks to cellphone photography, which is inferior to both film and digital cameras.  I understand we're usually not trying for quality photographs here, but why the need to record yet another pixelated image that means nothing to anyone ten seconds after it was shot?  Oh, but then we can slap it up on facebook, and it will stick around forever.

Anyway, I think we should all replace our heads with large cell phones.  Then, we wouldn't even have to call anyone, we could just think, and talk someone miles away!  And, we'd remember everything we saw.  And play ringtones whenever we wanted to.  And vibrate.  A lot.