Cell phone - the end of solitude and critical thinking

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McAvoy Layne
Special to the Bonanza
March 26, 2008

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Kahlil Gibran told us, "You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts." Judging by the vast numbers of people I see on their cells, there must be plenty of folks out there who are not at peace with their thoughts.

Critical thinking requires solitude, and solitude is the first thing you forfeit when you buy into the cell phone culture. Without critical thinking we end up talking about, well, other people.

The next time you're in an airport, just for fun, track the first five phone conversations you are forced to be privy to, and if four of them are not about other people I'll buy you a cup of coffee at Art's.

I, being one of the last three adults in the Silver State without a cell phone, am referred to by my neighbors as a Luddite, and this hurts me. Be that as it may, while running through the village each day, I see dozens of drivers on their cells, some smiling, some laughing, some shouting - all of them impaired. This incites me to exercise caution and step lively as I confront the "distracted generation."

People who call you from their cells while they are driving are generally killing time, your time. And it's interesting to note that there are now five discernable levels of speech volume: inside voice, outside voice, politician on the stump voice, subway voice when the train is passing, and cell phone voice. I see the color of my mood ring is changing as I am typing...

In the bigger picture, it will be interesting to see how our first generation raised on a cell phone will turn out. Most likely, they in turn will raise their kids by text messaging, and the following generation might never see their kids at all, except on holidays.

Once upon a time there was a guy named Tony Ulasewicz, who in helping to forge the Watergate cover-up was obliged to make so many calls from public telephones that he took to wearing a bus conductor's coin belt. Had Tony been handed a cell phone, we might never have known about Watergate.

Ironically, in the one place where cells phones would be useful, the sports book, they are not allowed.

Alexander Graham Bell must be spinning like a lathe. The first words ever heard on a telephone were Bell's excited command to his assistant Tom Watson, back in 1876, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you!"

How could Bell or Mr. Watson have known in that innocent age, that they were creating not just an instrument, but ushering in a culture of self-absorbed sycophants. Had Alexander been provided a preview of how the telephone would evolve, he might have put that genie back in the bottle.

Now that I am on record as holding great contempt and disdain for the cell phone, I will likely be the one who hits black ice during the last storm of the season, rolls down the embankment to the water's edge, and only wishing he had a cell phone, is left shouting, "Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!"