h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No one would use a cell phone who had the least thing of importance to say. I have seen people talking on the things while ordering at food counters. I have often heard people reading off the covers in video stores - are they servants? As the ability to communicate from everywhere all the time grows, it becomes harder to find anyone who has anything to say worth listening to. The time it took to get to a telephone used to be used, apparently, to think things through. No one of any talent ever lost a job because someone couldn't call him/her on the first try. "Oops we can't get Meryl Streep on the line, we'll go with Pia Zadora!"
These things increase stress by keeping people on the leash while convincing them they are convenient. Everyone who owns one has a story about being lost, broken down in a strange or dangerous area where the damn thing was a lifesaver, yet I comb old news accounts in vain for the sad tales of those folks who surely must have perished before 1990. Or did people refrain from driving in dangerous places in those halcyon days?
People use them, they say, to phone for help when they see accidents, which acidents were usually cause in the first place by someone babbling away idiotically while driving. If we did NOT get rescue crews to these people, we could only improve the gene pool...

Ohhh! I soooo like your gene pool theory! . I must confess though, as a teenager, I was one of the those people who thought digital watches were such a neat idea that I used my battery capacity within 2 hours of purchase. I'd like to think you'll find, though, that the technolology will find its own level of usefulness and people will stop using it (I mean, how many digital watches are sold these days?...I haven't used one since my 1st).

Steviebeef

I can´t believe we could go all this time without mentioning cell phones. There is certainly a useless piece of technology.

Useless, and highly annoying. Especially when its owner has changed the ring pattern to a snippet of music. There's nothing more irritating than to be in a grocery store and suddenly hear a tinny version of the Ride of the Valkyries.

"Honey, what else do we need? Go look in the cupboard next to the fridge."


Grrrrr.....

Ahh yes, people that go phone shopping. Those are annoying.

It's not the problem of the cell phone being useless. It's the user who makes sense of it - or not.
But I guess that's the case with many things that are dicussed here...

It seems to me that before the advent of mobile phones. People used to use their heads to sort out porblems away from home, nowadays they just ring someone and get them to tell them what to do. BUT if you've ever tried to follow directions given to them down the phone, it's impossible! Because if they can't see what the other person is talking about they get annoyed, and then the other person gets annoyed, until they're both shouting at each other!