There
is of course no small irony in the fact that I despised cell
phones when they first became ubiquitous. I hated them for
turning everyday life into a series of impulsive intrusions.
I disliked the way my friends treated them like digital leashes
that controlled their lives, instead of the other way around.
I considered myself a Zen purist; a proponent of clear minded
simplicity. It was my sister, Sunny, the Army intelligence
officer, who opened my cellular eyes with a single statement:
"There's nothing wrong with better communication.
It
accelerates evolution."
She’s right, of course. Cellular communication has
increased the speed of time in the 21st century because
it radically magnifies the number of things happening at any
given moment. When I was a kid the idea of having a wireless
globally connected instant communication device that fit in
the palm of your hand was totally sci-fi. Every time I whip
my cell phone out a little part of me wants to ask Scotty
to beam me up. We now live in a world where you can silently
transmit your most intimate thoughts and witty one-liners
to someone across the room, city, or globe simply by twitching
your thumbs in the proper sequence. SMS texting is an evolutionary
advancement in human existence because it gives us the technological
power of telepathy. Welcome to the future.
Cool as that is, I am still occasionally nostalgic for the
days when I carried a calling card in my wallet and knew the
precise location of every good pay phone in my area.
People made more of an effort to plan things and
be on time because it was harder to play fast and loose with
your schedule. Now there are almost no pay phones left in
the city, and everyone constantly changes their plans on the
fly simply because they can. There are still a few old blue
half-booths remaining in China Town that look like they were
recovered from a county jail but the only
people I ever see using them are the bums who
probe their change holes as they walk past. This is why my curiosity-meter
spiked when I saw an affluent white male in his late 40s wearing
Italian leather shoes walk out of a semi-swank nightclub, look at the glowing screen of his cell phone,
pocket it, and proceed to insert two quarters in one of these
time capsules.
I can only imagine a few scenarios where an obviously moneyed
white male with an operational cell phone would leave a
nightclub in China Town at 1:00am to use a
land line and none of them are legal. I find this person
incredibly intriguing. For whatever reason, he has decided
it is necessary to devolve his communication technology
by more than 10 years in order to successfully score Party
Night Outcome A or B. What is his story? ….
I follow him back inside the bar and watch from across the
room as he chats with a group of friends, finishes his drink,
and pays his bill. We walk out together and I pretend that
I smoke so I can bum a cigarette.
“How’s
your night going?” I ask.
“Oh,
pretty good,” he says, as he strikes a lighter and
offers me a flame. “And it's getting better by the minute.”
He pockets the lighter and draws his cell phone again in one deft
move. Then he uses it to call a
cab. Minutes later a European-looking cabbie appears ready to teleport
him to another world likely filled with an abundance of
booty, blow, and high-stakes poker games.
As the yellow
sedan pulls away from the curb I have a sneaking suspicion
that the diver’s name is Scotty.
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