Chapter 29, The Myth of the Cell Phone Addiction, June 17, 2005
Pundits and bloggers are addicted to decrying the supposed cell phone addiction of Americans.
Calls for government to do something about it can't be far behind, especially considering
the other claims that cell phones give us tumors, gut our memories, and jackhammer our
brains.
There are even reports of second-hand damage from others' cell phone use.
These articles go beyond merely claiming that cell phones are annoying and truly people
could learn some manners here as in many other aspects of life.
As regards to this supposed addiction, this is a word attached to any habitual behaviors
of others we do not like.
What's interesting here are those who offer something like a Marxian-style critique of
cell phone use.
We are alienated from society, we are told, and obviously tormented by loneliness and thereby
seek solidarity and community. But rather than seek out our genuine connection to others,
we reach for technology, the very thing that alienated us to begin with. We grow ever more
dependent on our gizmos but they ultimately disappoint because they only cause addiction
to Machines and thereby Increase Alienation Also, we the oppressed long for empowerment
and the ego boost generated by the sense of importance granted by the idea of receiving
and sending cell phone calls.
We can't stop using our cell phones and yet, they only further entangle us into an artificial
world of machines created via the money matrix.
Oh, just look at the cell phone people everywhere, surely this is the final stage of capitalism
in which we ignore our brothers and sisters walking next to us but instead talk through
electronic means to some distant party.
And talk about what?
About nothing!
It's like so cool to be on the phone!
You can make this sort of critique up about anything.
Pepper the essay with references to Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and, to stay
in good with the conservatives, the insufferable T.S. Eliot, finish it off with a hymn to primitivism.
Even a wish to return to the Garden of Eden without the taint of technological sin, and
you have a winning piece of commentary. It's all nonsense.
There is plenty wrong with this genre of criticism, as Tibor McCann points out. He
We found someone who regretted the invention of the mirror.
But let us address the cell phone in particular because many people seem to have bought into
the idea that it represents some sort of grave danger to the culture in an ominous sign of
something or other.
Of course, property owners are free to ban them or not.
Burger King wouldn't, but a five-star restaurant probably would, whatever is profitable.
Fiat property owners solve whatever problems arise, but these are not any different from
other problems of what dress, speech and behavior is right for the time and place. Certainly
there is no reason to ban cell phones on flights as the FCC is considering. Leave it up to
enterprise itself to decide. The critics, however, are not satisfied. They say cell
The cell phone addiction is a broader concern. To be sure, it's easy to defend the cell phone on grounds of its emergency services. With cell phones, people have never felt more safe and secure when driving or being out and about in potentially dangerous places.
The critics will concede that. What drives them nuts is casual use, the whole middle class casual culture of the cell phone which seems to them wholly disgusting.
And yet, it is its casual use of technology that makes its emergency use even more economically viable.
It is the demand for GAB that has driven up the number of providers, driven down the prices, and made amazing technologies available to all,
which then provides the spillover benefit of making the emergency use of the same technology affordable and ubiquitous.
A market of emergency-only cell service would not have become the mass phenomenon that it is today.
The appearance of addiction reflects a change in the use of public space made possible by new technology that was born into the marketplace only in 1994.
Ten years ago, talking on the phone was a behavior that was tied to place, namely the home or the workstation.
Or, there was the now anachronistic phone booth.
In retrospect, it is obvious that a vast amount of productivity was being wasted by the requirement
that we be strapped to a chair or a room in our homes or in a glass booth in order to
keep up with work duties, friends and family.
Suddenly, and almost like magic, that changed.
The cell phone made it possible to speak to anyone, anywhere from any place.
Think of it! What a dramatic transformation! For the first time in the history of everything,
anyone can have direct personal contact with anyone anytime. No more hiding out in the
home, wiling away the hours with friends or at the office, which used to be all about
the phone but which is now all about email and instant messaging. Professional and personal
uses of phone calls can take place anywhere. We can Bluetooth our way through all informal
Life Settings and Get the Most Out of Every Minute. Not only that, it seems obvious in
retrospect that audio communications are an individual and not a community affair. When
the telephone first came along, you had to walk to the post office or town market to
use it. What a pain! Then there were lines shared by several houses. How tedious! Then
Then there was one phone per household, owned and maintained by the government, PLEASE!
The ability to completely privatize audible communication has been possessed by the private
sector since at least 1947, but the government hogged too much of the radio spectrum to make
it possible.
It wasn't until 1994 that the government deigned to provide private enterprise what
it needed to create a revolution in communication.
For this reason, it is useful to think of the cell phone as a freedom technology along
the lines of the World Wide Web.
Both were developed by the private sector for the private sector.
Both represent institutional revolts against the state's presumption to own and control
the command posts of society.
Cells and the web are the mode and means of liberation that the state will forever resent.
But back to the supposed addiction we all have.
We are only making the best use of our time.
What better time to talk on the phone than when other tasks are prohibited to us?
You can turn driving into a multi-tasked operation.
Same with walking to and from places.
So too with shopping at the mall.
These are the very times to pull out the cell phone, not as an addiction but as a means
of Making the Most Productive Use of a Period of Time. It is simply a matter of economizing,
that is, directing resources toward their highest valued use. But because our eyes see
something new, something we haven't been socialized to expect, and because the market
is expanding and democratizing so rapidly, it creates the illusion of something having
The oddity of public phone use first dawned on the academic class several years ago when
they would walk through campus and see throngs of students yammering away on the phone.
Addiction. Can these kids unplug themselves even for a minute to enjoy the scenery or talk to real people? Why should they be so interested in their pathetic little materialistic existence even after all the assigned readings from Veblen, Marx and Derrida?
We need to realize something. These kids are walking to and from classes in which they must sit and listen and take notes for an hour or two.
They are headed to another class where they will do the same, or they might be headed to a library study session, or they might be headed to the pool to meet friends.
In any of these cases, a phone call is not possible or desirable, but traveling from one spot to another, shopping, driving, it's just the time to call, even if only to leave a message.
Now, you might respond that these kids are not actually saying anything useful.
They're engaged in conversational junk punctuated by grunts of nothing.
Well, productivity is a subjective concept.
Meeting social obligations, making another person feel connected, letting someone know
you care.
These are all productive activities as understood by the individual speaking.
Who are we to say what constitutes valuable or valueless conversations?
The pundit class has a penchant for judging the culture of freedom harshly.
If, ten years ago, these same critics had walked up and down the block peering into
people's windows, they might have spied people on the phone in every home.
They might have decried this as phone addiction, but nobody would have taken them seriously.
In fact, the response would have been readily at hand.
Find your own business, bud, and get a life!
Actually, that's not a bad response to most everything that comes out of the carping class
of intellectuals who try to make us feel guilty and oppressed for using products that improve
our lot in life.
Modern technology has us all talking to each other again.
That can't be a bad thing.