100 years ago we were in the early stages of trading in the horse for the horseless carriage. It’s a deal that has cost us several million lives in the century past–about a Vietnam War’s worth every year for decades now. Not pleasant deaths, most of them. And many times that number in injuries, maimings, paralyzings . Air pollution has contributed to how many more millions of lives, as well as stinking things up? Cities have been sliced, diced and strangled by highways. Suburbs, a killer app of the automobile’s extended range, are considered in many quarters at best a mixed blessing, including the average hour and three quarters commute. (Because you will now be able to commute you will have to commute.)
The price of living with the automobile has been so high it’s hard to imagine that if someone had gotten up at that first meeting and done a powerpoint on the likely downside of progress we would have voted to go ahead.
But of course there never was such a meeting. Looking before we leap has never been our way. Besides, who could have predicted all the various sorts of fallout? (Who was motivated to make a good guess?) Apparently we remain totally sold, despite the well- publicized carnage.
As Dr. Phil says, how’s that been workin’ for you? It’s a reasonable question.
It’s over 10 years now that hundreds of citizens of the town of Wellfleet fought the good fight against cell phone towers. Since you don’t have cell phones without cell phone towers, that meant we decided we could get along without these new devices and the advertised advantage of electronic ubiquity. In fact we thought it might be a drag overhearing conversations with stockbrokers at beaches, let alone restaurants. We didn’t think there were enough advantages to be worth having to look at gawky towers towering over trees and church steeples.
We dug up info on worrisome longterm effects of microwave radiation, on anybody being beamed at by those towers, but especially on the brains of those receiving calls.
Finally after several years of struggle we were defeated by determined companies with their persistent lawyers, at first cajoling, in the end threatening to take the town through expensive litigation we couldn’t afford.
Now of course such a struggle seems quixotic at best. I see it all now: we were like the clueless old geezer yelling “Get a horse.” Our lives now would be unrecognizeable without cell phones. Remember having to find a pay phone booth to phone ahead your excuse for running late? Remember trying to find your own way somewhere without constant consultation with your destination? Imagine standing in line and having to talk with the perfect stranger next to you rather than being able to chat up your best buddy at home?
The health concerns have not been proved wrong. In January a new study showed (again) that using your cell while driving makes you statistically as unsafe on the roads as a drunk driver. There are laws in some places against doing that, but they seem both unenforceable and silly. Using a cell to get directions or start your business meeting before you actually arrive is a killer app.
And have you seen that video making the rounds online showing four or five cell phones pointing at some unpopped corn, those phones being activated and within a few seconds those kernels popping? The point seems to be not that here’s a whole other app, cooking (along with taking stealth photos or writing a bestselling novel in Japan) but that this is your brain on cell phone microwaves.
As with the automobile, the quality of life change is huge and once again I suppose we can say we’ve chosen this new technology. But it might do us some good to remind ourselves of the price and ask the Dr. Phil question: how’s that workin’ for us?
(Full disclosure: I myself have a cell phone and I even remember to bring it with me sometimes when I leave the house after years of being reminded that that’s sort of the point).
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