Dialogue: Cellphones signal the end of civilisation as we know it

By WILLY TROLOVE*

Recent allegations by the British Government (the same people who brought you Margaret Thatcher and mad cow disease) that cellphones cause no ill- effects on the brain are a truckload and a half of five-day-old baloney.

You don't believe me? Just look around.

Those of you who value the simple things in life - strolling along beaches, climbing mountains, felling rimu - will remember those golden days when mobile phones were only imaginary gadgets on science-fiction television shows, like Buck Rogers or Charlie's Angels.

Over the years, you would have watched as, one by one, your friends, your colleagues and your personal trainers succumbed to the pressure and bought themselves one of those chunky, clunky mobile phones that were only slightly less bulky than a brick. "How convenient," they said. "How trendy," they gushed. "How terribly modern," they oozed.

You smiled through it all. You smiled through the walks that were ruined, the dinners that were interrupted and the intimate moments that were made less intimate by all those terribly important telephone calls.

Perhaps you gave in. Perhaps you sacrificed your splendid isolation on the altar of instantaneous communication and joined the mad throng.

If so, it is too late. I cannot reach you now (except, perhaps, by text message).

Those of us who are left, we few without cellphones, we brave proud happy few, must band together in darkened tunnels and behind hills outside the coverage area. For civilisation is at stake.

History has a lesson for us.

The Romans were undone by their own technology. So fond they were of plumbing that they piped water to their homes. How convenient, how terribly modern to have fresh aqua flowing in every villa.

But their pipes were made of lead. The lead made the Romans mad, Rome descended into debauchery and the empire collapsed (I may have missed one or two pivotal events but the thrust of the argument remains the same).

The Vandals, thoughtfully, ripped out all the plumbing, but they were too late, the damage was already done. Two thousand years on and the Italians still cannot organise a government.

Just as plumbing brought down Roman civilisation, so cellphones are bringing down ours.

Remember when people used to plan their day? "I'll meet you at three outside the library," they would say (the library being the place where civilised people met in the days before cellphones). Now they say, "I'll ring you this afternoon and we'll decide where we're going to meet."

Without exception you end up meeting at some downtown cafe called Blather or Travesty, and instead of getting a couple of books out for free, you end up forking over $10 for a cup of coffee and a slice that gives every appearance of being tasty and fattening but turns out to be made almost entirely of birdseed or recycled asbestos.

And remember when your telephone was big and you couldn't lose it unless you accidentally lost the wall that it was connected to? Now cellphones are tiny and impossible to find. People, used to searching for those items they needed occasionally to locate - like cheque-books, socks or children - spend most of the day searching for their phones.

In fact, the recent downturn in business confidence has nothing to do with falling dollars, rising taxes or climbing interest rates. No, it's because businessmen are having tremendous trouble finding their cellphones.

Remember when it didn't matter if you didn't get to the telephone in time? "They'll ring back," was the catchcry. Now, if cellphone junkies are without their phones for even half a day, they descend into a sweaty and trembling abyss of phone-guilt.

Back at the answering service, uncleared messages are building up and everyone knows that after a while they start falling off the end like lemmings at a cliff-top picnic. Oh the horror, the sheer horror of it all.

Finally, remember when people walked the streets without raving like lunatics? The cellphone earpiece put an end to all that. No longer do cellphone users have to lift the phone to their ear. Instead, the user is free to wave his or her arms about in a dangerous fashion while conducting a loud, one-sided conversation with himself and every poor fool within a 50m radius.

So, the British Government thinks cellphones have no ill-effects on the brain? Perhaps they've just been making too many calls.

* Willy Trolove is a Darfield-based engineer.