can you hear me now?

One of my pet peeves is cell phones.  I swear to God, those damned things may be the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on humanity.

Don't get me wrong -- nobody wants a wireless communication system more than I do.  And while the cell phone system is certainly wireless, calling it "communication" is still no small exaggeration.

It's all about costs vs. benefits.  Portability is a huge, undeniable benefit, but I wonder if everyone's understating the costs of frail cellular connectivity.  I wouldn't mind seeing a proper accounting of all the time we spend saying "I missed that last part, can you please repeat it?", or all the time we've wasted in one-sided conversations before realizing we've been disconnected.

And in the rush to make cell phones ever smaller, we seem to have forgotten that they need to be big enough to reach both our mouth and at least one ear.  When a mouthpiece actually went in front of your mouth (imagine that!), one voice in the room stood out above all others.  Now, with the "mouthpiece" sometimes closer to your ear than your mouth, the phone picks up a lot of voices -- all part of the cost of collecting your speech from around the corner of your head.

We use cell phones in a lot of places we never used land lines.  Noisy places.  And windy places -- few experiences are more frustrating than hearing your caller's words decay into meaningless mumbling as he steps out of a building and into the wind.  Or hearing her speech staccatoed by her high heels double-timing across concrete.

And then there's what they call half duplex -- a subtle technicality that means only one person can talk at a time, but which also makes it impossible to interrupt, say for example, so that you can ask them to repeat everything after "Hello..."  Maybe we should go back to saying "Roger," and "Over and out!"

Cell phones are great in emergencies.  I have no doubt they save lives every day.  But you wouldn't see me taking friends for a Sunday drive in an "emergency" rental car, or serving my storm supplies to guests -- why the hell would I call them to chat on my emergency phone?

In fact, I submit that if you have a land-line available and you choose to call someone with a cell phone anyway -- I submit that technically you're being inconsiderate.  Rude.

And if you're going to call someone on their cell phone -- when you already know the quality's going to suffer as it is -- for Pete's sake, get to a land line.

That's the (Crackle!) John ..alt Line... (Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz -- Click!)

Comments

[JohnJ]

You know what else I hate? I hate cars. I can't imagine anything more useless than something that gets a flat tire or has to be filled up with gas occasionally. And doors! Why should I have to turn a dorrknob just to open a door? They should open automatically! And air conditioning sucks. It never cools off quickly enough, and I always have to adjust the temperature depending on the weather. And windows are just a horrible idea. It's either too much light or too little. And why put something so breakable right there! There must be people getting cut by windows every day. That was just an incredibly stupid idea. And don't get me started on washing machines...

[John Galt]

Good point, John -- do you think you'd actually accept the same performance out of your car that we seem to tolerate on a daily basis from our cell phones?

You wouldn't put your kids in an airplane that worked like a cell phone, and you wouldn't eat in a restaurant where the service was like that of a cell phone carrier.

Thanks for making my case.

[Leo]

I'd rather not nitpick the rest of your opinions, but if you look at it from a cell phone maker's perspective, I think you'll see why things went they way they did. Young people want smaller and cooler cell phones because it helps them get laid by aiding their social status (trust me, it works). It's sort of like a teenager's way of flaunting an expensive car when your parents won't buy you an expensive car. Weigh that cost/benefit for a second; I'll gladly take the poorer performance in return.