It sits upon its own invisible extremities or sometimes hangs unobtrusively in a place of perceived convenience. At other times, it attaches itself to the hip of its host while waiting patiently to strike upon his flaccid ear. Although it warns aurally, or sometimes with a gentle vibration, the subsequent stimulation of its victim’s curiosity is the real threat, rendering that victim immediately helpless as he submits to its demands for immediate and full attention.
Do the legions of its victims willingly give up control and disengage themselves from a known relationship to respond to the pleasant stimulation of curiosity? How many are induced to put aside an unrepeatable personal moment to appease the beast who preys upon one’s insecurity and random attentiveness to other people or to the task at hand?
Like Pavlovian dogs responding to a bell with foaming jowls, so the mindless among us respond to a cellular phone’s narcotic ringing, forsaking all and everyone to respond to its bidding. No thought, no conversation, no mental or physical embrace can stifle the Maslovian-like need to submit to this all consuming Siren’s song.
Excusable, I think not! This instrument of denial, this bastard of the coupling of honest and complete face to face communication, this detractor of intimacy makes fools of wise men and liars of lovers. “Run to me,” it calls. “Take me close to your mind so that I may consume your every thought and shut out those thoughts, dreams, and even those people that seconds ago possessed you entirely. You are mine now, and I have you in my silence and trivial insignificance, as well as that rare occasion of importance that always justifies one’s submission to me.”
Overshadowing our humanity now and stealing any semblance of future direct human interaction, one electronic communication device foreshadows another evil, an evolutionary descendent that already shouts with that sinister, too familiar, intonation of, “You have mail!”
Solicitors, gossips, pimple-faced teens with hormonal cravings,/ Faceless, insecure, mindless, pathetic technophiles,/ Sit, if you must, in a whirl of electronic impulses.
Become one with microthin-wires or silicon chips,/ You TechnoCommies with deteriorating senses,/ Barely aware of microwaved bombardments,/ Sometimes reflected, more frequently, absorbed.
Degenerating brain cells,/ Souls becoming numb and then void,/ Void of the essence of that spiritual substance/ Once called humanity, now, e-humanity.
It is a troubled trek into the interneted future that we face. It will require that the motto of the United States be modified, re-written, and recited anew. “PHONUS INTERRUPTAE – IN CELLULAR COMMUNICATIONS WE TRUST,” will necessarily replace, “IN GOD WE TRUST,” and later a common declaration will be articulated, necessarily lacking in humanity, “MY MACHINE WILL GET IN TOUCH WITH YOUR MACHINE,” heard and seen on hand-held, pocket-sized, wrist-banded, or desk-top devices everywhere. It is likely that even the Statue of Liberty’s torch will be replaced by a cellular phone and Lady Justice’s book of laws will become a lap top computer storing all the ethics and morality of e-law.
All of this is certain to become our reality…as certain as my spell checker has corrected all of my linguistic transgressions in this essay.