Week 11
Motion: THB smartphones are a multi-purpose tool
Role: Deputy Leader (opp.)
I do not own a smartphone. Out of curiosity, I once borrowed my “legendary” girlfriend’s mobile phone and held it in my hand in a kebab restaurant after a meal. I went online into social media and tried to run my business there. It was hopeless. The arrows did not follow my directions. I could not get anything done. I could watch but I could not interact. It was a miserable experience. I do own a mobile phone of the old school for calls and texts. The tardiness and unresponsiveness of mobile phones is still their major drawback. Even if they would work wonderfully with the fastest available 5G connectivity, most people cannot afford that but have to rely on something cheaper and nastier.
Addiction to Mobile Phone Is Like Chainsmoking
People use their mobile phones like a life-long smoker employs cigarettes, cigars, e-cigarettes or snuff. Smartphoning and tobacco products provide a break in the grey monotony of everyday life and a bridge to some alternative universe. The relief of the mobile phone is external, the relief in nicotine internal. The experience can also be built into a chain, as we have seen happen. People cannot always stop their online co-existence; just look at all the people in public transportation with devices in their hands complete with a source of noise and earbuds, just the same as they may light a smoke from the stub of the earlier one and thus build a continuity.
There is also another dimension that they share. Both are ritualistic, routine behaviours, where ritual, sameness and similarity is key. People usually smoke a certain brand and are loath to swap it for something else, even if tobacco brands smell alike and probably also burn alike. When people surf on the Internet, they usually divide their time between few destinations, unable to choose alternative ones, even if the internet is a vast, oceanlike place with lots of places to go. A habit forces people to just consume the content of a select few sites.
Mobile Phones Fit Into One’s Breast or Other Pocket
There is also the similarity that a mobile phone is handy in the same way a pack of cigarettes is; it can be fitted into most pockets in one’s garments. It is easy to produce. Both are rectangular in shape. Earlier mobile phones were not so similar. Nokia Communicator, for instance, was different in shape, so it did not bear the likeness of a pack of smokes. You also need to protect both against humidity and moisture. A mobile phone won’t work around wet, and ciggies don’t catch fire if they are damp.
What I’m saying is that smartphones are alike packs of cigarettes. It has been said of the latter that at one point they were “the World’s cheapest status symbol”, which meant that they were brand products that even peoples in the underdeveloped world could buy and have. I fear that that distinction now goes to smartphone, as it so readily available all over the world. Refugees have smartphones. Their spread is alike that of Marlboro Reds that are also everywhere, like Coca-Cola is. And then there is their affordability. Smartphones have that quality as they can usually be bought in installments on an installment plan, and that is why they are affordable to everyone and also bought by relatively poor people. Loco alimenti circenses ludicras habent.
Smartphones Are the Postmodern Equivalent of a Pack of Cigarettes
I think that I have proven that smartphones are not a multi-purpose tool that they are claimed to be but rather something more sinister. They are the postmodern version of a pack of cigarettes. A drug. A drug of the upper and/or downer family. Surprisingly many things unite the two as a common factor, as has been demonstrated above and earlier on. And what does that mean by extension?? That – they’re bad for you!! of course.
Like smoking has been phased out by successive steps in society, beginning in 1995, when the first anti-smoking measures were imposed legislatively, it is likely that smartphones could go toward the same fate, except that there is no such legislation so far, not even bills in the pipeline. All the same, changing that is just a matter of time, not of opportunity. Parliaments could swiftly turn against smartphones with help from imaginative MPs and multipartisan committees. (Here is a related article I discovered only later on.)
Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t). Käyn mobiilia yhteiskuntaa vastaan vahvoilla argumenteilla, jotka pohjautuvat todellisuuteen ja sen luonteeseen. Minua ei haittaisi, vaikka faxit, kaapeli-tv, lankalinjat ja puhelinkopit olisivat vielä käytössä, koska niihin liittyy 1900-luvun romantiikkaa. Vastapuolen edustajista ja heidän assertioistaan tuskin on pulaa, koska älypuhelimet ovat lyöneet niin hyvin itsensä läpi yhteiskunnallisesti, joten tästä tulee rehellinen ja tasaväkinen väittely.
Polar Ice Standpoints Society 