In 1844, a man named Innocenzo Manzetti first conceived of a ’speaking telegraph.’ Only 33 short years later, it had become a reality. Alexander Graham Bell made his first successful phone call in 1877. He made the call because he needed his assistant, Mr. Watson. He understood, even at the earliest stage, that the phone would be used as an extraordinary tool.
I remember growing up, seeing the importance of the phone as I watched television shows. Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry depended on the phone. It was too far to head off to Mount Pilot every time he needed to get information, so he would call Sarah the Operator and she could not only connect him with the State Police office, but could catch him up on all the gossip.
We watched the boys and girls of Sweet Apple, Ohio share the news about Kim Macafee getting pinned by Hugo Peabody. Even Zach Morris knew you had to have a phone if you wanted to get ahead in the world. He would use his big, honkin’ portable phone to order pizzas, plan the undoing of Mr. Belding, or call up Kelly Kapowski to tell her how awesome she was.
Zach apparently knew a great deal. Since those days, we’ve gone from the simple little LED display cellular phones and progressed further than I ever would have thought possible. Portable devices (calling them cellular phones would be doing a disservice to these outstanding tools) allow us to stream on-demand music over the airwaves to our phones. Handhelds let us see the internet from anywhere we want. Blackberries allow us to receive our email automatically, no matter where we are. iPhones give us the ability to send SMS messages, map our location using GPS, and play SuperMonkeyBall. Oh yeah, they also make phone calls.
Early cell phones cost a small fortune to purchase and too much to actually operate. Today they are so inexpensive, you can purchase phones simple enough to lose or replace when you’ve used up the included minutes. Everyone, their mother, and their children has a cell phone. With the proliferation of mobile devices placing them now in the hands of nearly everyone on the planet, I find it hard to believe that anyone would be reluctant to use one in important circumstances. However, I am constantly amazed by the complexities of the human mind and it’s system for managing choices.
One such amazing feat of decision imprecision? Imagine if you were a home contractor of sorts, and you came upon a situation in which an important decision had to be made. You’ve come to a point in the project where, in order to complete a particular step, a decision must be made regarding the disposition of a 100+ year old plant. You, as the contractor, must make a choice.
- Change the original plan to preserve the plant, possibly upsetting the homeowner because of the change;
- Cut the ancient plant to make way for the project, possibly upsetting the homeowner because of the change;
- Stop work on the project and wait for the owner to return home, possibly upsetting the homeowner because of the delay;
- Pick up any one of the 6 phones on the job site and call the owner to ask “What would you prefer we do?”
All the technological advances you can fit in one’s pocket are of no help if you are not wearing the right pants. Or something like that.
Continuing the theme I began last week, I offer the last of my resolutions for 2009.
My house is filled with videos of the family. I have 8mm video tapes I took on my first video camera. Well, it’s not actually my first camera. The first one my wife and I bought from Tops Appliance City. It was not really very good, and it had clearly been opened before. When we decided to go with a different camera (from Jersey Camera) we took that first one back to Tops. They wanted to charge us a restocking fee of 15%. Luckily, my wife was pregnant at the time (we wanted a camera ready for when Skippy was born) so with a little rubbing of the stomach and a lot of looking sad, we got it waived.
