Mobile Phones

Considering how many people live in fear of going without their phone, it’s hard to imagine a world before the pesky little devices. Who’s to say Napoleon wouldn’t have stayed in his tent endlessly scrolling during the wild hundred days. He might have never made it to Waterloo for a final face-off with Wellington and the others, choosing to play Candy Crush instead. 

In Colonial New York, you couldn’t grab your phone and start talking into it, a trusty ruse to get crazy people off the scent and onto another target. Back then, you had to deal with the nuts straight on. It made for a more direct society, one where a citizen’s ability to check out with headphones and a nose buried into a screen were impossible. The smallest broadsides were quite enormous by today’s standards. 

And this is the main reason to have a phone. It is not to contact your loved ones or use in an emergency. It is to fend off the burgeoning class of wackos, yahoos, and yo-yos parading the streets in increasingly large numbers. Too bad most of them also have phones. Thus they see through the little games we play. Something else is needed to buy us more time, something even more distracting. What could that be? 

When I’m in Philadelphia, I always make it a point to climb up the 36 foot statue of William Penn, resting atop City Hall, gazing off at the bustling metropolis, quantifying where the city falls demonstrably short. It’s not exactly legal, nor safe, but always extremely gratifying. William Penn, that wild Quaker man and father of the American street grid, detester of Euro-trash roundabouts, is often overlooked. But the statute, carved by Alexander Milne Calder is worth checking out if you can sneak past a phalanx of security and aren’t one bit afraid of heights. While it’s still high above the street, it’s striking enough to catch the attention of passing drivers and pedestrians. 

As you might have guessed, my problems with modern phones are quite extensive. I possess a network of critiques and petty hatreds regarding Bell’s invention. 

It’s time mobile phones became mobile phones. Calder’s grandson, also named Alexander, specialized in this. Think of all the lunatics who’d be frozen in place at the sight of a complicated mobile phone, buzzing, twirling, and dangling, all at the same time. While fitting a device like this in your pocket isn’t easy, or in the overhead compartment on a plane, no one, and I mean no one, will bother you if they see you talking into a 30 foot mobile. Except for maybe an art student. Which is not always better than catching a maniac's glare.