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March 28, 2008 by Migs  
Filed under Migs

One invention which I won’t mind not having is the telephone. It is a useful invention all right. To be more accurate, it is an irritatingly useful invention: a device that rings regardless of when you think it should or prefer it would; an interminable request imposing itself regardless of whether or not you feel like answering it; a source of nervous anticipation when you’re expecting to hear the good news, a source of seconded misery when you’re expecting to hear the bad. Of course all that science with electric signals enables you to speak to a friend half a world away at a phenomenal convenience. But to put things in my narrow perspective, I see the telephone as not essentially different from knowing what it would be like if human beings were equipped with hearing and speaking abilities that transcend distance. Early human history has proven we could live without both.

Imagine then what I think about the cell phone being invented, and about most Filipinos knowing every kind there is. Filing out of the Robinsons Movieworld early this year (to the uninitiated, Filipinos watch boxing matches in theaters now), I noticed every other person holding phones to their ears, celebrating Pacquiao’s electric victory with their Nokias, Samsungs, Motorola Razrs, etc. Never mind their spoiling those who didn’t see the fight live; my bother came from being around a seemingly infinite number of people chattering away on their mobile phones. They were there and yet they weren’t really there, so many of them talking all at once and to each his own receiver. It’s not so much the noise as the noise culture – a culture of such remoteness, thriving in this age of molded plastics and portable conversations.

Do we love the thing so much as to carry it everyday in our pockets? Do we think it so important and sacrosanct that, even for those who loathe its institution, as I do, we nonetheless aren’t given the simplistic option of turning it off? To merely ignore an incoming call or message would make us worry, sort of being granted awareness that there’s business unfinished. To reject it means to face the inevitable question ‘why did you?’, as if you’ve committed an illicit deed and are being tried. Surely you’d be convicted if you make the wrong kind of admission, or lie.

Now this fact shouldn’t be misconstrued as hypocrisy: I own a Sony Ericsson. I don’t care what the devil its model is, but for purposes of due description, my cell phone has some wonderful extra features: a calendar which I don’t mark, a “Java-powered” game which I don’t play, a bunch of Internet and e-mail connectivity options which I don’t synchronize, and a camera which I don’t use, or perhaps am saving for the day when LeBron James walks into my room. Right now I make use of the thing for all work-related calls and messages. And that’s about it – just the buttons needed pressed to ask for deadline extensions (or cash advances). Even so, on occasions that arise wherein a phone call is in order, the battery always runs out. This is my mobile’s only stroke of pure genius.

If I was totally out of work, however, I would find the mobile phone just about as necessary as a Kevin Federline song on the music charts: I mean, what for? While I must admit that this is a bitterer treatise than expected from someone who had skipped lunches back in high school to save for an inch-thick Ericsson G628, I have to be categorical in this discourse now. After all, I find the lower-technology forms of correspondence more agreeable: the buzz of an incoming fax, the fibers of a torn envelope, the tenderness of greeting cards, the creative possibilities of electronic mail, the tradition of stamps, and the human connection of two people being – literally – in touch. I don’t find in the phone any exclusive idiosyncratic quality which would warrant making the medium not just the first option, but the only option; personalized ringing tones just don’t cut it, at least not for me.

For those who find my opinion on this matter extremely idiotic, spare me the sales talk. I haven’t the least tincture of caring – not about when mankind will enable video-conferencing in a mobile phone, not about a future where everyone can create a movie with a Nicole Richie-slim Nokia. Phones must have never been invented to make life easier.

But oh my goodness – the new iPhone is a work of art, even if only for its looks. And do I want one for next Christmas? Do I? Do I?

About the Author:  Migs Bassig is a freelance writer and journalist with a background in Mass Communications. After working for a Manila-based advertising agency, PR firm, and events organizer, he now contributes to various locally published magazines and newspapers, and is one of the authors of Metroblogging Manila. A suburbanite commuter, Migs has lived all his life in the Philippines and loves scouring the Philippine capital’s rich patina of arts and literature.