Comment
When it comes to phones, small is beautiful
Evening Standard – August 14, 2006
London is full of people who display their Blackberrys as a badge of pride, not shame. I have started to notice them at concerts, conferences, restaurants and on rowing machines, ostentatiously laying the things out where they can be seen from every angle, and sighing with barely concealed impatience if they’re forced to turn their toys to “silent” or, God forbid, “off”. So powerful is the lure of constant communication that I’ve seen women in changing rooms drop the clothes they were about to try on when the dreaded bleep summons them back to work and squat down on the floor to dash off an email.
At Glyndebourne, during the sunset picnic break, I saw a man in black tie nodding absentmindedly to the ladies around the foldaway table, smiling as if he hadn’t heard when they offered him more asparagus.
I looked closer. Of course. He’d got his machine furtively positioned just under the table, wrapped in the tablecloth so his dining partners wouldn’t notice. Nothing was going to make him stop.
The message an ostentatious communications user believes he or she is conveying is that he has a hot-line to power. If the price is waking up, sweating, at 2 a.m., to check for messages from the boss, so be it.
Everyone watching will be impressed that Blackberry Man is so important to so many people that he can’t be out of contact, ever, not even for a night at the opera and certainly not for a week on holiday. The latest beachbags even have pockets sewn inside to protect the precious items from the sand.
But who is really impressed now that they are so widespread? When it comes down to it, we don’t know if all that frantic tapping is really a dealmaking email or just reaching level 47 of Minebreaker. And who, apart from the owner of the phone in question, will care?
When I lost my last great heavy advanced action-packed thing, one that had been a drag in my bag and a drain on my pocket and kept me connected far too closely to people I’d rather have left behind at night, I was, briefly, heartbroken.
But then I got myself a quick temporary replacement – a disposable phone, £10 worth of tacky silver plastic, powered by basic, no-frills, no-nonsense pay-as-you-go – and found myself having a stunning change of consciousness. This flimsy thing couldn’t play games, take videos, store songs, remember anniversaries or send pictures to grandma.
Even better, I couldn’t receive emails. All my new phone could do was phone people – and that’s exactly as it should be. Small is beautiful.
ENDS