Gonna get myself, I'm gonna get myself
I'm gonna get myself connected. - Connected, by the Stereo MC's.
It was the invention the majority of science fiction writers missed, yet the one which has had one of the greatest, enduring, and still developing effects on us: The mobile phone and smartphone. Nikola Tesla correctly predicted them in his New York Times article 'Wireless Of The Future' and of course there was Gene Rodenbury's Star Trek communicator which though not the inspiration for the 'cell phone' may well have hastened its development.
At first they were the clunky Eighties 'bricks' so beloved of the ridiculously wide-lapeled suit wearing 'Yuppies'. I occasionally spotted someone using one and acting like Dom Joly's irritating Loud Phone Man years before he brought that character into being, or perhaps it was a case of art imitating life? I'm surprised many of those obnoxious gits weren't thrown from speeding expresses having annoyed entire carriages full of people to beyond breaking point while bellowing one sided conversations regarding their business dealings or involved personal lives down the blower. "LOOK, I'M JUST ABOUT TO GET LYNCHED AND THROWN OFF THE TRAIN BY A FURIOUS MOB!... I'LL CALL YOU LATER! BYE!... YES, BYE!... BYE!... BYE! BY-"
But during the 1990s things began to change. The handsets began shrinking in size, analogue phones were rendered obsolete by the introduction of the digital GSM (Global Standard for Mobile; you hip young things may know it as 2G) along with the speculation the new networks might prove impenetrable to government surveillance efforts (yes, we all know how that worked out!) More non-stockbroking people started using them, and found that occasionally their calls were not only connecting properly, but were also being completed without dropping for the princely sum of £1.29 per minute (unless you were one of the few unfortunates who'd bought into Hutchinson Telecom's Rabbit network, where even if you were close to and directly in line of sight of their prominent hot spots found in most UK towns, you were still better off shouting or using Ye Olde Phone Box.) It was no longer necessary to commit to a Loadsamoney monthly contract in order to have a phone; you could choose to only pay for the calls you made (although the tariffs for the occasional user were more expensive.) The operators began to realise the public wouldn't stand for paying £75 for six months' pre-pay 'line rental' (and where was the 'line' that was supposed to 'rented' anyway?) nor would they put up with seeing their call credit expire after a set time, even if no calls had been made. The restrictive practices and corporate customer abuses - not to mention the call costs - were collapsing in the face of market saturation; in order to gain new customers the telcos would have to become more competitive. Mobile phones were becoming ubiquitous, even to the point where I decided the time was right to get one.
It was Christmas Eve 1999, and if you believed the hype we were poised on the brink of disaster. Things were already grim; Westlife were the Christmas Number One with their murdering of ABBA's 'I Have A Dream' and if that wasn't enough to depress you, the world awaited with foreboding the yet to be discovered effects of the Millennium Bug which might possibly bring our computer dependent civilisation crashing down around us. Some friends and I were trying to commiserate ourselves on our traditional festive drinking night out, and over the course of a beery evening the subject of the conversation switched to mobile phones. It was the cue for everyone except me to reach into their pockets and show off their brand new devices.
I was astonished at what I saw. Like a bumpkin in the city I beheld a phone which folded in half and flipped open to operate - chichi-chi-chi - just like in Star Trek. Another friend demonstrated how his moby's keyboard slid out, and it was theoretically possible to connect to the equally novel internet without using any wires at all, but the process was glacially slow, as well as the network not supporting that feature yet. One dog and bone even had the choice of eleven preprogrammed ringtones to make your incoming call stand out from all the others in a busy place. I felt as if I was being left behind; I decided there and then I was gonna get myself connected as the irritating Stereo MC's track played to death as the backing for a mobile phone shop chain's adverts put it.
A few days later I found a phone - a Motorola M3788e - on offer in the holiday sales for £70 down from £129.99, plus a £10 top up. I was at last connected. My link to the world was the size and weight of a cordless handset, the battery pack literally four AAA ni-cad rechargable cells wrapped in a connecting frame, but least there was no fragile telescopic antenna to bend as it was being pulled out whenever the phone rang, that had been superseded by a tough three inch long black plastic spike which could be used as a weapon if necessary. Its tiny monochrone screen and keypad were suffused with a faint, pale green glow, redolent of radioactive alien slime.
With a sense of pride I used a self-service printing machine skulking in the corner of an arcade to make up some business cards with my new number. The world may crash and burn, but I was going to enter the new millennium with a miracle of technology in my hand. In the end though the promised Armageddon turned out to be a typically damp British fizzle, as I expected to be. I reasoned - correctly as it transpired - that as computers had been dealing with post millennial dates for months or years ahead already without problems, little of consequence would happen on the night. So instead of terrified uncertainty in the power cut dark our quiet family gathering watched bemused the live show from the Millennium Dome as two 'aerialists' in gold lamé skinsuits clung to dangling ropes, looking to all the world as if they were trying to copulate on high. Meanwhile I was sending new-fangled SMS - texts - wishing everyone previously entered by painstaking keypad pecking in the 99 spaces available on my SIM card a happy new year. The messages took a long time to send and the replies to come through; not the effects of the Bug but just the network creaking under the strain of peak demand.
So my mobile phone life began. That trusty brick kept going for quite a while, but I became increasingly irked by its clumsy operating system, poor battery life, and way too faint earpiece volume. I was thinking about trading it in for something better when fate intervened in the form of a road accident which left me concussed but otherwise OK, but the phone cracked, crazed and gouged beyond repair. Maybe it had taken a bullet for me but I felt there was too much in the way of bad ju-ju associated with it. The time had come for it to be recycled to that great pocket in the sky.
