The Phoneheads are coming

 

One day we will look down at our mobile phones and never look up again

THE NUMBER OF BATTERED city-dwellers is growing fast.

I have a purple bruise on my knee where I walked into a locked door.

The woman next to me had a red scrape on her forehead from a lamppost.

A third member sprained her ankle when she tripped over a small dog.

We compared wounds at an informal meeting of the Phone-Starers Club, a group of SAD people whose entire lives have been sucked into their mobile phones.

We are the people who walk around holding the things in front of us.

We are the folk who resent the few minutes a day we have to tear our eyes away from our tiny screens, for other activities, such as leaping onto a bus, engaging in sport or having sex.

Our numbers are growing. You can now find us in all major cities. South Korea has become a country full of people who couldn’t care less about losing their wallets, passports, or children, but would instantly commit suicide if their phones were mislaid. But they are everywhere.

“I just joined the ranks of phone gazers about three weeks ago,” said  Angela, a reader from Singapore. Aware of potential dangers, she recommends you do it “on the train or bus only, else you might walk into a hole”.

The first time I admitted to having a major pedestrian traffic accident while reading a particularly gripping text message on my phone was in March.

I promptly received a note from a Filipino reader named Vince A: “Your column gave me an idea about the next killer mobile feature: the ability to show on the screen what the user is walking towards.”

I told him it was a good idea. Phone-starers have blindly walked off cliffs, under buses, and into the paths of trains. Not only can these accidents be fatal, but worse, they can be humiliating (falling over a baby stroller is INCREDIBLY embarrassing).

Stop laughing! It’s not funny. For critics who see us as pathetic technology addicts who should get lives, I reply: Yeah? So? What’s your point?

On my way home from our phone-starers meeting, I decided to check my email. In the inbox was an excited note from Vince saying that the technology he had envisaged two months earlier has now been launched.

Yes! You can now walk down the road reading your phone screen AND see the pavement ahead of you. A program called Email ‘n’ Walk makes a live, real-time movie of everything in front of you and plays it as the background of the email on your screen. In practice, it makes your phone see-through. The system is ready for download for i-Phone users (look up Phase2 Media on the Internet) but should eventually be available for all phones.

I can’t wait. Once I get that, I need never look away from my beloved mobile phone again. If my children want to talk to me or my wife wants her conjugal rights, I shall just tell them to position themselves in front of the phone and get on with it.

The news from Vince made me so happy that I forwarded it to several people while I was walking down the road. Which was when I tripped over a baby carriage. It was SO embarrassing.

 

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Comments

[phonehead]

I am a sad sad pathetic phonehead and i want an email n walk!

[fardel]

Charles Darwin had a theory on evolution.

Homo Erectus became Homo Sapiens
He is now on his way to become Homo telephonensis

You: the Homo telephonensis !
Yes , You !
You can win a Darwin Award
In two steps ( maybe only one, if you are really good )

It's very easy:
Keep going!
good luck !

[Angela]

hahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahhahaha......

bam!!!

darn it!! I just walked into the turnstile.

I laughed so loud that my daughter just whispered from the corner of her mouth that "people are looking at you, Mom!" while pretending that she doesn't know me.

We had this argument before, she said it is embarrassing that I laugh out loud at the most inappropriate places (airport lounge, shopping mall queue, train, bus, while getting foot massage, etc..) and especially when I am with her. I assured her that I always laugh that way no matter who I am with. She is pissed that I cannot just laugh in my mind. I told her that it is an illness I was born with, I lacked the facility to laugh silently but not to worry because I have voluntarily admitted myself to LOLA (Laughing Out Loud Anonymous) and there are plenty of us, we meet daily at mrjam.typad.com.

[Vince A]

Just imagine the possibilities that malware (viruses, trojans, etc.) can wreak on this device's display:

- obscuring a pothole you are about to step into.
- reshaping the vital statistics of every person in front of you.
- imposing Nury's portrait on the face of everyone you see on the screen
- putting baby carriages where there are none.

Still, phoneheads that we are, we would probably continue undaunted, and just bring our grandpa's blind walking sticks with us, just to confirm that that hole and baby carriage are real, without having to look up.

[Uli]

Angela, I am a member of LOLA, too, and yes, my daughter is sometimes embarrassed about my laughing out loud no matter where ;-)))))
BTW, for the phoneheads: there is a technology for pilots during nightflights to have their data from the cockpit dashboard displayed in front of their vision helmets. So why not turn Vince's technology around and have the mobile phone data displayed inside your (sun)glasses?!

[Chamin]

Hi Angela,

I too am proud to be a member of LOLA. And if it is a disease, I am seriously considering passing it to my kids :-p.

[fardel]

I am a member of LOLA too
and I am extra careful:
I never read this columns while :
- eating or drinking (unless I want to repaint the wall )
-carrying anything fragile

[sej]

Uli, Vince: Taking the idea even further... take the concept of the bionic eye, and then add the above functionality, and beam it straight into people's optic nerve... straight into their head!

The bionic eye is close to reality, although no where near the capabilities of the Six Million Dollar Man of the '70s TV series. Right now, they can only give users the ability to detect rough shapes, but they're hoping within the next few years users will have the ability to be able to read (large) text and the like.

Perhaps eventually we can inject the image of a PC's display into such a system, do away with computer monitors! Have memory chips store all our photos, and display on these devices, or informational documents, with network connectivity sucking stuff from the Internet. Audio could be included if linked to a bionic ear. Embed a microphone somewhere in our neck, an antennae on the top of our skull. Kids will argue they won't need to go to school anymore because they have ready Internet access to information 24/7, beamed directly into their brains.

[sej]

Oh, I forgot, of course, use of mrjam.typepad.com would be a condition of use of such a device.

[vickna]

as funny as this article is, it's giving me the creeps. just this morning, after a minor altercation with my team mate, i was fantasizing about burning everything electronic that i owned, moving to the remotest place in the world (read:wherever there is no WIFI) and living out the rest of my days as a technological hermit.

[Angela]

LOL..love this gang :)

Vince A, maybe we can replace walking stick with seeing eye dog?

sej, you are giving me the creeps man!

Can this technology also warn me of on-coming jerks and assholes on the street and suggest ways to avoid them?

Since the iphone has taken over my life, I have suffered lots of injuries and not all are related to walking into things or people. I have also suffered from stiff neck and bad posture, pain on my elbow and waist, and headache from reading small texts.

[sej]

Angela, include a camera in the chip in the eye, and we've got a survellance system. Whatever you look at, can be recorded/transmitted for posterity.

[fardel]

Hey guys , and girls!
I am sorry for you , the paying prisoners of technology.
From time memorable , since I had to walk twenty minutes to school (four times a day ) I realized that it was wasted time:
I developed a technique which has been working since then:
My eyes watch the road,and give command to the body.
The rest of my brain is busy learning my lessons,developing new projects,or dreaming about far distant land.
Each one of us is delivered with this function, which has a tremendous advantage on the modern technology:
It does not fail
It can be turned on and off at will
It has a built-in instant alert system
And the best thing is .....
IT IS free of charge!
( I mean ,you do not need to put your fingers in an electrical outlet to recharge your "batteries" : it has an automatic recharging system called sleep )

The downturn is that others could see you as a walking ghost.
Don't worry,they are too busy watching their phones.

[Uli]

My husband always scoffs at me because my mobile phone (which is at least 8 years old!) has only three positions:
1. lying forgotten at home
2. switched off
3. battery empty
So I personally do not really need it and thus didn't suffer from the above mentioned calamities :-)))

[Vince A]

Hear! Hear! fardel! (Too bad you are imaginary)

I confess I am one of those who do not need mp3 players because I can play music in my head. Anything from Mozart's Symphony #40 to Gilian and Charlene's 'I'm a Little Teapot'

Occasionally, I play it too loud and some of the music escapes through my lips. And train passengers stare at the guy in suit and tie singing about his handle and his spout.

[Rika]

Why do you have to stop using it during sex?

[Angela]

Rika is right, you don't have to stop. Put the phone on 'vibrate' and ask your partner to call you :)

[Lisa]

I must be old-fashioned cuz I only experience such danger if the thing in hand is a book (yeah, some people still read from things that have pages made of paper).
Having said that, my husband dragged us to the 3 centre in Mong Kok at 11pm lastnight and bought himself an iphone. I refused to get involved in the whole process and promptly opened my book and continued reading. It was nearly midnight when we finally left. He was supposed to have changed his phone plan for something cheaper - turns out his new plan is 6 times more expensive. I warned him that his iphone craze would phase out the same way it did when he got an Xbox and two fish tanks.
The Xbox is jammed somewhere in a closet and we have only one surviving fish left which my husband randomly remembers to feed and decided to name Clara "because she looks like a Clara and deserves a name since she's not dead yet".

[Definitely anonymous]

If I had a partner who looked as gorgeous as Rika I would definitely put my phone down and focus on what was in front of me!!

[PG]

LOL I missed a station when I was texting my friend... =0

Nury I love your stuff!! I read the RD asia every month and it's AMAZING!!

[sej]

It's all getting closer... we've now made the jump to hearing aids which can be directly connected to iPods and other MP3 players, phones, wireless headsets, etc., etc., etc...

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/hightech-hearing-aid-the-ultimate-ipod-accessory-20090809-ee8p.html

It's only a matter of time!!

[Mozeo]

It's funny that this is so true of today's society. People are so distracted with their phones, they fail to enjoy a normal life. This does open a door for SMS mobile marketers looking to advertise a product. With so many people using text, they are able to find more people to send business messages to.