Turn that thing off! (Why I hate your mobile phone)

By Kushal Dave

Second only to the sound of an alarm clock, the most irritating noise in the world is the ring of a mobile phone. Although similar to the trill of a regular phone, it is rendered intolerable by its context. In the same way that the alarm clock would be no big deal if it weren't interrupting the latest iteration of my Katie Holmes dream series, the phone would be no problem if it weren't so damn intrusive.

But intrusive it is. The cacophonous phones ring everywhere—from churches to movie theatres. They're an epidemic. While working at a recent conference in Finland for leaders from the telecommunications industry, I laughed at the irony when ringing mobile phones interrupted keynote speakers. The enraged conference manager threatened to get a radio wave scrambler to silence the din.

And the intrusion extends past the ring itself. While in Scandinavia, I witnessed Finns who walked together yet remained totally ignorant of each other's presence. The culprit: ubiquitous mobile phones. When coupled with the latest rage—using earphones so that the phone itself can be held directly in front of the face—the technology gave the most innocuous cadre of milling teens the ambience of a Secret Service convention. The walls the phones had created were almost visible. Finland, with its extensive mobile penetration, foreshadows America's own eventual degradation.

But suppose we Americans resist such pervasive social intrusion and use our mobiles chiefly when we're alone and bored. Surely it's okay to use a phone in solitude! Who could possibly be irritated? Maybe the people on the other end who have to endure garbled voices and dropped calls. Possibly the ones who have to listen to shouted half-conversations on the train. Or perhaps the people in the car next to the one with the swerving dialer. In fact, a report in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the chance of getting in a car accident was quadrupled by the use of a car phone.

Disturbingly, Wired magazine reports in this month's issue that more mobile phones were sold worldwide last year than cars and computers put together. Companies predict there will be one billion mobile phone users in the world by 2003. Already, mobile phones are outnumbering their antique counterparts in some areas of the world, and the problem can only get worse as the cost of mobile service decreases.

The sad part is how truly unnecessary most of these conversations are. The quintessential call consists of this: "Hi, I'll be there in five minutes." Even the more substantial conversations can easily be postponed until the caller is at his or her desk or meets the callee in person. Pointless calls squander the time and money of everyone involved, and yet they persist. Why?

It all seems to emanate from a feeling of self-importance—the sense that not being constantly connected to the world leaves it vulnerable to catastrophe. Such a mindset is terribly misguided. While mobile phones are handy for reporting emergencies or, as I witnessed many times, finding someone else at the Philhar-monic Concert in otherwise unnavigable Central Park, on the whole they remain superfluous.

Soon, mobile phones will combine with Palm Pilot-like devices to provide wireless web access. While this will undoubtedly prove useful for travelers stranded without a map, or moviegoers needing show times, it also calls up nightmarish visions of deranged Mets fans trying to find the latest scores on espn.com while running rampant on the road at rush hour.

The phone absolutely should not be positioned as a status symbol. It is one of those sad necessities to be avoided as much as possible, like a watch or a pocket protector or an early morning language class. Like the latter, it should not be confused with real interpersonal interaction or other genuinely entertaining and pleasurable experiences.

As contemporary philosopher Umberto Eco puts it: "Anyone who flaunts a portable phone as a symbol of power is, on the contrary, announcing to all and sundry his desperate, subaltern position, in which he is obliged to snap to attention, even when making love, if the CEO happens to telephone; he has to pursue creditors day and night to keep his head above water; and he is persecuted by the bank, even at his daughter's First Holy Communion, because of an overdraft. The fact that he uses, ostentatiously, his cellular is proof that he doesn't know these things, and it is the confirmation of his social banishment, beyond appeal."

So please, when you are a wealthy, high-powered Yale grad, practice "celibacy" and turn your phone off. Unless people's lives are really depending on you, just check your messages when you're alone and not behind a wheel or with a real, live human being. Leave it on only if you're trying to find someone in Central Park or your father's just been rushed to the hospital. Most often the world, unlike that 8:30 attendance-taking, can wait.