"Mobile Phone, Mobile Phone, tell me who's the most beautiful woman in the world!!!"
"It is you, Your Majesty."
"Mobile Phone, Mobile Phone, tell me who's the most beautiful woman in the world!!!"
"It is you, Your Majesty."
"Mobile Phone, Mobile Phone, tell me who's the most beautiful ..."
"Battery low. System shutting down......"
If Snow White lived in the era of mobile phone, surely she would easily be found by the Queen's assasin for her whereabouts can easily be detected by GPS. The Queen who is Snow White's evil step-mother could trash her magic mirror, for a complete database of the whole women in the world would be enough and more efficient if she wanted to compare her beauty.
That's not a ridiculous fairy tale. I just want to describe how powerful your mobile phone is now. It seems that the modern generation won't live without it. For example, imagine a life without SMS! You cannot comunicate with each other that easy. Moreover, SMS is almost counted as a free thing nowadays, even sometimes cheaper than fresh air and clean water. SMS is one of the most charming feature of mobile phone.
It's odd that mobile phone at first was used for pure communication purposes only. It was totally for urgent matter such as business meeting or military. However, some clever men captured the prospect of this device by inventing and adding many more entertainment features for mobile phone. Mobile phone then changed into a mini-computer. Mobile phone-related business then follows to be rich, such as SIM provider and even MP's casing business. This is when mobile phone turns to be your second soul.
Look at the ubiquitous pressence of mobile phone now. You mat see madness here and there: parents aborting their children because they're listening to their mobile phones, teenagers playing games on mobile phone while waiting for MRT, and so forth. Yes, games. It has even worsened the deep addictive impact. It's like that those mobile phone makers want to establish a new game console. I wonder in the future students will play Final Fantasy on the phone while calling their teachers.
Oh, that's also wrong! Your teacher can use the GPS to locate you and even rent a IT master (or a hacker) to trace all your activities. You seem to lose all your privacies now. This is the doom for those people who like to lie about their recent whereabouts (like irresponsible drunk husband for example).
For some people, mobile phone is a device to find a soul-mate. You can type 100 SMS per day to your loved one even you're far apart from him/her. You fill turn crazy when you hear the special ringtone of your phone indicating that your lover has replied (or another junk message that your free SMS toll has increased again due to your intensive SMS activity). Actually, who do you love at most then, the person you're communicating virtually or the phone? You may love the person that sends you SMS, but you actually lvoe your phone more. If suddenly your phone turns blank without any reason, you may want to cry till your blood oozes.
This is what Baudrillard sayas about implosion of communication. You don't have to live in reality to stay exist. You have your second life, your virtual identity. Not only by cell phone, you can create your personal avatar in Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and even this Blogspot. However, since cellphone has more fans and users, cellphone seems to be more suitable to be a Communication God. Your virtual identity may not be your real condition, but it reflects your desire. Your virtual identity provides you a virtual escape and facilities to express. However, because the virtual world isn't real, we can express almost anything there and sometimes forget to get back to where we actually belong.
Is Mobile Phone that bad? I'm not saying it's bad. The point is you should be able to behave yourself even to the most indulging and entertaining child of technology.
And you will be the master of your mobile phone then, not vice versa...