The Cell Phone
When significant numbers of a given species begin picking up rocks and successfully hucking them at birds or other edibles, that species has evolved. Instead of growing faster, or stronger, or acquiring the ability to project sticky strands of webbing, the species has begun to exploit bits of its environment to get ahead.
Thus: You don't have to start physically grafting rocket launchers onto people's arms in order to change what it means to be human, although that would be cool.
Getting a cell phone is every bit as novel and important as growing a long, prehensile tail that can puff out smoke signals and order a barbecue chicken pizza. Homo cellular is at least a step removed from his more primitive cousin, Homo sapiens. He's a different creature.
But not necessarily a better creature. Having the power to download a Fatboy Slim ringtone is, at best, a slight evolutionary step sideways, although it's a good investment of $1.99.
Everything changes when you join the ranks of the Homo cellular. When you travel, you don't waste time appreciating the changing scenery or enjoying the various delightful or irritating things the weather gods have cooked up. You can, instead, Get Things Done.
Sometimes, these things are stupid, like annoying your girlfriend, or triple-confirming a lunch date. Sometimes they're important, like getting directions, or honoring your mother's birthday, or ordering a barbecue chicken pizza.
Handy gadgets. Handy adaptation. How many thousands of inventions went into our cute little flip-top phones? How much technological effort, how many hundreds of significant "eureka" moments went into creating a chipmunk-sized lump of metal and plastic that lights up, takes photos, plays music, stores data, vibrates, plays games and displays images? And you can call people on it, too!
That's why they're awesome.
A cell phone is the heart of a web. Our professional life, family life and social life are now all routed through a single portable hub. Anyone can disturb us during dinner, or a quiet cup of coffee, or a leisurely morning of cow milking. The walls are down.
More of humanity is striving to catch up to Homo cellular. There are people in Africa who, faced with the choice of buying more minutes or more adequately feeding their families, hesitate. There are trackless stretches of desert that have lost their once awe-inspiring isolation. There are bombs that can be detonated as easily as calling the Howard Stern Show.
(A bomber in the Occupied Territories made the mistake of using his regular cell phone as the detonator, forgetting that his friends might give him a ring to see if he was free for a tiny cup of extremely over-sweetened tea. See also: The bombers who got blown up because they forgot about daylight saving time.)
Whether you're somewhere as lonely as Manhattan or as strange as southern Illinois, you're never alone when you carry a cell phone. Homo cellular has stepped boldly beyond all that.
The species is different.
Not better.
Different.
— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)
— graphic by Derek Evernden (derek@ocellus.net)
