Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Phone it in.


I realise lately that I need to get myself a new mobile phone, especially when each time I make a call or do text messaging, I have to reassemble it. When I look at it, a Motorola, I am reminded of how far it has come. My first phone, bought in late 90s was a Motorola Microtac (above pix), a piece of equipment that never forgets to remind you that the bulk in your pants is unfortunately not your superlative manhood.

My first encounter with phones of course began during my childhood but not at home, coz we were too poor to afford one. Calls had to be made from dad’s office, and that too for only emergency matters like, say, for example, death. Casual conversations were distilled in form of letters, which are now referred to as snail mail, and it usually take days to reach the other party, and so on so forth. That is, if it ever reaches. Sometimes the friends or relatives might actually be visiting you when the mail they wrote days earlier arrives. That’s embarrassing.

Anyway, the phones I saw were usually in relatives place. It was the type where you have to dial, like rotate the first number that you need to dial and wait for it to settle back to its original position and rotate the second number, till you are done. If, let’s say, you started during the breakfast by the time you are done, they’d announce the dinner. Thankfully, it was replaced with the ones you see nowadays, the ones with button, where you can tap on extremely fast and dial wrong numbers.

Mobile phones were never heard off back in the 80s, though I realise now they were around. It’s just we’ve never seen them. It was in the 90s when more folks started using and buying them, like my ex-boss, who got one of those big things now referred to as brickphone. You probably heard the jokes about how they can be used as battering weapons. They really are. The buttons are so hard to press, and you can use it only for phone conversation. You can’t stuff it in your pocket, and if you accidentally drop it on your feet, pray to your god that you can walk in couple of month’s time.

But things were about to change when “features” started to be added in. A form of time capsule you can look at would be the second Pierce Brosnan/James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies, where the Ericsson (before becoming Sony Ericsson to add Japanese fetish in) would do any goddam thing except having sex with the Bond girls. Unfortunately, twelve years on we are not driving our cars with a mobile phone, let’s not even talk about sex.

Still, we have gone a long way. Mobile phone almost control our lives these days, especially when the call is from wife. Okay, that has been happening forever, but damn it, wouldn’t you go panicking when the phone “tells” you that it’s out of battery? Wouldn’t it frustrate you when you walk into the lift talking to it and suddenly the coverage goes off and you go “Hello? Hello?” loudly while the others in lift look at you the same way they look at a snatch thief?

Soon, we’ll be doing anything and everything with our phone unless it involves intestines. But I am giving its future too much credit. Remember, once they thought the Zeppelin was the future of aerospace, till it got burnt, crashed and killed hundreds. We all know that it’s the aeroplane that have taken over and have since killed thousands.

We shall wait and watch the evolution of the mobile phones. In the meantime, I am would be looking for a model with feature such as writing blog posts.

2 comments:

Gopalakrishnan Nair said...

Back in the old days, did U ever pretend your using your calculator as a phone. I'm telling U Dude, got a few chicks by doing so. Alas, their legs were a tragedy.

Rakesh Kumar said...

Haha, that is stuff of B-grade comedy man.

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