Cellphones = Evil

In this modern world of technology and mobility, you can do almost everything from your cellular phone. Ordering pizza, reading up on facts, cruise around the internet, download and watch feature films... The options are endless. But the one thing nobody seems to be able to do is leave the thing alone.

A colleague came over to my desk earlier and picked up my phone (pictured). It's always lying nearby in case someone is looking for me, but usually once I put it down on my desk I don't touch it. She looked at the phone, turned it over a bit and says: "I like your phone. It's nice and small... Don't like the qwerty keyboard though."

"Why not?"

"I don't like qwerty keyboards," she replies. "I can't type on it while I'm driving 'cause I need to look what I'm doing."

"Why do you need to type on your phone while you're driving?"

She pauses for a second, ignoring the question, pondering. Then continues.

"Rich always gets annoyed with me when I take my phone out in the movies..."

At this point I interrupted her.

Are you that addicted to your phone that you can't even leave it alone for a few hours? And it's not like the phone rang or anything, you just take it out and make sure nobody was looking for you, or even worse, you go onto some social activity site like MXit or Facebook to see how you can keep yourself busy while you're in the movies. What's wrong with this picture? You're in a movie! Why are you looking for something else to do?

It gets worse. Why do you need to type something on your phone while you're driving? Can't it wait until you get to wherever you're going? And if it's important enough not to wait, why don't you pull over and do it? If your phone rings you can answer it and put it straight onto speakerphone without much trouble (my phone you hold down the answer button for a moment and it beeps).

The problem goes deeper than a mere addiction to a device. The cellphone has given people access to alternative activities no matter what they're doing. This means people never concentrate on a single thing at a time. They must always be doing at least two, maybe even three things, which inevitably means they're doing two or three things, half or a third as well as they should or could.

When you take out your phone during a movie, you're not just spoiling the movie for yourself (less immersed, not seeing the good parts, etc.), you're also spoiling it for the 6 or 8 people sitting roughly behind you, who now have to look past a 1000 lumens backlight to get to the screen.

Cellphone users while driving are far worse than drunk drivers, especially because drunk drivers are at least still concentrating on the road.

Think about how much you use your cellphone. I'm sure you can use it alot less.

Words:
'I'm putting together a creature that pretty much Darwin would go: "Hey... um... I'm never taking acid ever again".'
-Robin Williams, playing with Spore Creature Editor