Ball and chain diatribe

They’re very much a modern day ball and chain. For all their convenience, mobile phones certainly have a lot to answer for. Possessing the means of being able to contact/communicate with those who are near and dear to us is not so much a luxurious benefit, but as standard we have grown accustom to. Do we really want to be on-call 24/7? It’s 08:00am, Sunday morning and Mum’s giving me a ring to send her love. I have not yet been to sleep and I’m wallowing around my bedroom in an inebriated stupor. A sense a vibrating pulse surging beneath my duvet, somebody is calling, caller id ‘unknown’. While the fabric of reality is melting before my eyes, i now have to compose myself and attempt to feign being compos mentis so that my unsuspecting mother does not let on. I have found myself in trying to dig my way out of these deep technologically -intrusive holes many a time. Yes, I could turn my phone off or at least ignore it.

With the exception of a very small minority (my Grandma now not included!!), we all have a mobile phone. They have become more than a norm, they, arguably, define and facilitate people’s image and lifestyle. More like a 21^st century Swiss-army knife, the mobile phone is now a camera, mp3 player, portal to the cyber highway, and did i mention you can even make phone calls – fancy that! At the moment, my life seems to be punctuated by brief periods during which I emerge momentarily from a culture coma. I was sat on the bus, a few weeks back, and experienced one of these foreboding awakenings. As i gazed around me every single passenger was sat, hand raised 12 inches from their face, transfixed by the small LCD screen in front of their eyes. Any other day of the week i wouldn’t have batted an eye lid, but for now the blasé factor was absent. The whole thing presented it to be both ludicrous and surreal. I thought to myself: ‘Philip K Dick would be kicking himself if he were here now; the dreaded sci-fi prophesy has dawned!!’. This probably all seems fairly reasonable to you: a mass of people sat together, seemingly isolated, staring blankly at a 6 inch block, communicating indirectly with people they can’t see.

I’m no Luddite, technology is great. It’s cool that we can capture those picturesque vistas, listen to music on the go and whatnot, but i guess it’s how we use it. I am of course being completely and hopelessly idealistic here. We should probably shoulder some responsibility for our propensity to abuse the fuck out of everything – not that i ‘m cynical of the determination and mettle of the human spirit!! However, we cannot be held completely culpable. No, i think we are all being led a little astray here by a devious Sheppard. You see our dependency to technology didn’t occur in an instance – I’m laughing to myself while I write this because I’m typing words the spell check doesn’t even comprehend. I’m making a fine, albeit, unintentional illustration of one of the many consequences of technology saturation. So we didn’t wake up one day to find Facebook and i-phones; we have been slowly drip-fed technology. No doubt, technology of this grandeur has been ready to go for a long time. But imagine the shock likely to have been experienced by people as they find themselves to be confounded and threatened by the radical permutations. Alternatively technology has been intentionally staggered so that the shocks were measured and regulated – and most importantly - it has become fixed within the psyche of all people living in developed societies that this is now a ‘norm’.

As to what the perceptible ramifications of being steadily overloaded and engulfed with superfluous technology are: there are many. But relevant to the here and now is something I shall call Bionic arm syndrome. The overwhelming majority of us suffer from this unfortunate complex disorder. You may be able to self-diagnose yourself from the cited symptoms: phantom phone vibrations; checking your phone or social network account every 5 minutes; fiddling with gadgetry when exposed to awkward and difficult situations or environments (classic civil inattention); online verbal diarrheal ranting (oh the irony!!); assuming people would like a running commentary of every intimate detail of your life and satisfying this urge by recoursing to Facebook to ‘share’ these details; and finally, believing you are worth your weight in Facebook friends. Should you any of these symptoms be applicable, the only cure – though research concludes it to be highly unethical – deactivate your Facebook account, turn off your mobile phone and make friends with ‘real’ people. Sadly i often hear: ‘But wait a minute, I did all that. I left my house, tried to socialise with strangers. The problem was I couldn’t get a word in as they were busy with their cyber friends’. Though I’m being facetious, the bionic arm thing is underlining how overly acclimatised we all are to technology. My concern is how this is altering our psyche and outlook. I’m confident that all of you can relate to the symptoms of Bionic arm disorder I listed. So while I’m hinting at things like mobile phones et al assuming a security-blanket like function, I think bionic-arm disorder is more apt and benefits from not having such a Freudian label. The obvious 21^st century sci-fi connotations are apparent within the name, but on a serious note – they are like an extra limb. Without a mobile phone et al do we feel enabled? Of course not, we feel disenfranchised. On a simple level the thought: ‘shit, i didn’t bother to make a copy of any contact numbers on paper is bound to occur.’, on a profounder level we have lost a source of security.

Currently I am experimenting periodically with depriving myself of certain technological implements. The aim not to isolate myself, but rather to observe my own behaviour and feelings towards not doing things like carry a phone around with me or even leaving it switched on - and Christ, what a habit to break. The cause of concern for me is this has gone beyond habituation and is now instinct.