Cell phones are worthless. The reasons are numerous as to why this is true. Thankfully, I have listed a few of them for your edification. Rejoice and redeem yourselves, ye sinners, for I bring forth to you the light of way, the life without the jackal that prays on the soft underbelly of our fair society - the cellular phone.
I see a great number of people walking around talking on cell phones. What are they saying in these conversations? Usually they are just reporting their status to someone else. "Oh, I'm at the door now." "I'm on my way to class." "Where are you?" I mean, is it necessary to call the person you're going to see and tell him or her that you are approaching their dormitory at that exact instant?
Cell phones are supposedly handy in case of emergencies. They could get you out of trouble, some would say. Well, perhaps if I had a car to drive, this would become a better argument. But I'm not seeing too many parking spaces around campus, much less kids parking into them. Other emergency situations that I get into are really rare and far in between. I'm not going to get lost on campus and need to call someone for directions. I will most likely not go wandering 17 blocks off of campus late at night and become disoriented enough as to require guidance.
Unless you are a stock broker, doctor or lawyer, you don't need a cell phone. Brokers need to keep up with their stocks, something rather urgent that requires real-time responses. Doctors save lives - in order to do so, they need to be contacted at the golf course rather quickly. Drug dealers need to be on-call as well, satiating the needs of their clientele at any hour. We, the common citizen, do not need to perform any of these tasks. Nor do we need a cell phone.
There is nothing that I do that is so random as to require a cell phone. I live a pretty structured routine of attending classes, eating out, going shopping and hanging out. People who need to find me usually know where I am, or are able to figure out from others where I am. There is almost no chance when they are going to absolutely need to contact me for something. I don't need or want to be able to be reached every waking hour of the day, only to report what I'm doing or where I am. Sometimes there might even be a need for privacy.
Nothing happening really needs my immediate attention. People can leave a message with the answering machine - something perhaps too ancient for many to comprehend - or, for the more technologically inclined, AOL Instant Messenger. I don't think that I need to be interrupted during class or a meal, only to be asked by the roommate where I put the dishwashing liquid. Seriously, things can wait. Cell phones are just a waste.
Idiots that don't have the ability to drive well in the first place try to talk and drive at the same time. Enough said.
The cancer factor is yet another attractive feature of owning a cell phone. Talk long enough on this thing and you will get brain tumors. Fantastic. Where do I sign up?
I'm sure everyone has tried to use a cell phone by now. Riddle me this: Who designed these things to be so small. The smaller they get, the more likely you are to lose them and to have to pay for another. And for all you cell-phone-ites, tell me that you haven't lost that thing at least 32 times.
Despite this inherent disadvantage, people are getting smaller and smaller cell phone designs. They become more and more difficult to use as they get smaller. Perhaps my fingers are just too fat, but it's nearly impossible to press those dinky buttons. Every time I try to use a cell phone, I am reminded of The Simpsons episode where Homer becomes a lard-ass and cannot dial the phone anymore. I can already hear that cell phone bleeping, blaring and kindly informing to me that the fingers I have used to dial are too fat and that I need to mash the keypad with my palm to obtain a special dialing wand.
Another thing inherently wrong with cell phones: those different ring tones. Those symphonic-like renderings of classical concertos go perfectly with the blinking laser-light show antennas and flaming hologram covers.
Finally, I would like to discuss the annoyance factor. I concede the fact that cell phones are a plague here to stay. But the times that people use them are so annoying. Not a single day am I able to sit through a class without hearing one of those things go off. Now unless your wife is in labor or there's some other dire emergency, I don't think you need to have that phone turned on in class. Every speech that I attend, put on by those great MSE Symposium people, would have been great, had it not been for those 18 cell phones that went off during the punch line of speaker's joke.
Thoreau once said that he wanted "to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life."
These mechanical devices that we surround ourselves with aren't really necessary are they? Think about it.
