I wonder what Alexander Graham Bell would think?
You know, he was the Scottish born phonics expert who invented the telephone 130 years ago this year.
What would he think of all the people walking along the street or driving their cars who, at first glance, appear to be talking to themselves? A second glance shows you they are, of course, talking into those flip-top metallic devices we know as "cell phones." But let's go back to the year 1876 for a moment, to be precise, March 10 1876 when Bell, experimenting in his lab, uttered those words that helped change the world forever.
"Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you," he recorded in his lab notes, when his voice was transmitted over a wire to his assistant with the very first telephone receiver.
Now that thing did not look anywhere near like a cell phone. It looked more like a miniature wash tub with a wood frame suspended over it.
Just suppose you were magically transported back in time with your cell phone to that day, and you were walking along somewhere, talking on it.
They probably would have chased you down with a butterfly net and locked you up.
As recently as ten, maybe even five years ago, I don't doubt that you would at least get a curious stare if you broke out your cell phone and started talking into it in public.
Oh, I'm not complaining, mind you.
Cell phones have made communication incredibly convenient, though a bit mysterious in a way.
It used to be when someone called you, you assumed they were either at home or at the office or somewhere where a fixed land line phone was located. Now there's no telling where they're calling from, unless of course they tell you because the phone goes everywhere they go. Don't you just love it when you hear a toilet flush?
Example: recently I got a call from a friend who I thought was in south Georgia and had they not told me they were calling from Rome, Georgia, I would not have known.
With cell phones there are etiquette and safety issues that never came up before.
What do you think of a person who chats on his cell phone in a movie theater, or breaks the thing out and starts yacking to it in a restaurant at the table next to you, and how about those people who don't keep their side of the conversation to themselves and talk loud and long and sometimes obnoxiously to the party on the receiving end?
The police can tell you about talking on a cell phone in the car... not a good thing.
Do many of us do it? Yes. Do some of us wind up in wrecks because we are driving the cell phone instead of the car? Yes. Look at the statistics from DeKalb County which recently passed a law providing penalties for people who cause wrecks while talking on the phone.
There is only one thing you should drive when you're driving a car or truck - and that is the car or truck.
I think Mr. Bell would be proud and somewhat astounded that his invention has come such a long way, only now I suspect if he was talking to Watson and he had a cell phone, he might say, "Can you hear me now?"
(Jerry Gunn is a reporter for WDUN NEWS TALK 550, MAJIC 1029, SPORTS RADION 1240 THE TICKET and AccessNorthGa.com.)
Wednesday
October 16th, 2024
7:28PM
