Mobile Phones

It’s a sunny afternoon and I’m sitting on the grass, headphones in, leaning against a retaining wall in a busy Sydney park. Suddenly, while thumbing through my phone, it’s snatched from my hand, inches from the ground. It all happens so fast I just jump up and yell, “Hey!”.

My brain catches up with what’s happened. A tall man, in a white shirt, sprints away and I see two, thin, white headphone chords flailing behind him.

My phone has been stolen.

Continue reading "Is an act of crime ever too trivial for investigation?" »

Ever since mobile phones first popped up on shopping centre shelves equipped with tiny 2 megapixel cameras, we’ve been subjected to endless hysteria about how, gosh darnit, that new fangled Generation Y just can’t go a minute without MMSing pictures of their genitalia to each other.

Today Tonight and talkback radio have frightened the bejesus out of us with horror stories of teenagers’ naked pictures being spread around entire schools. Parents have chewed through fingernail after fingernail fretting: Just what sinister sexual secrets lie behind the PIN on my teenager’s phone? What’s happening to our daughters? Could somebody PLEASE think of the children?!

Newsflash, wowsers. Sexting is no big deal. It never really was.

Continue reading "Listen up you wowsers, sexting is no big deal" »

As of next month Air New Zealand passengers will be allowed to use mobiles while on board, enabling Kiwi jet-setters to advise their loved ones that their flight is on schedule and they’ll be home by sucks.

What really sucks about this move is that it will destroy the sole remaining bastion of public peace, the sanctuary of the aircraft, which in this hyper-connected modern world is the only escape from texts, tweets, emails, and the sheer horror of the loud and long-winded conversations of strangers.

I’ve never been to New Zealand but from what I can gather it consists of two islands, each of them about 500km long, with a large airport in the middle somewhere so that its citizens can emigrate to Australia to find work. Based on this rough estimate the longest domestic flight in NZ would take about 40 minutes and the extremely popular one-way flight to Bondi only marginally longer.

Continue reading "Texts, tweets, emails and other inanities at 36,000 ft" »

Last Friday I did the unthinkable – I switched off my mobile phone.

At first there was the separation anxiety, not unlike the cravings one feels when on a diet, that insatiable yearning for something you know you can’t have. Then there was the involuntary impulse to reach into my pocket to check the phone for a text message, email or a missed call. Every look at the blank screen was disappointing.

As lunchtime approached, I’d become suitably acclimatised to this change to my daily routine. I read the newspaper uninterrupted over a strong Irish tea. It makes you realise how much the mobile impacts on everyday life. I use it far too much. If you ask me, enough is enough.

Continue reading "Phones-off Fridays" »

Now the movie Australia was long. Really long. Which might explain why when I saw it at the cinema the guy down the row not only answered two phone calls, but smoked two cigarettes inside the cinema during the flim.

I wish now The Drover had turned his head from the dusty plain, stepped down through the silver screen into the cinema and said to the guy what I was too shy to say: turn it off you selfish idiot! (Just to clarify this Drover dream sequence of mine was all about mobile phone etiquette, nothing else, really.)

Harry Connick Jr, however, would have been as useless as me. Sitting there wishing the battery would go flat but politely soldiering on “in character”.

Continue reading "Turn your phone off you inconsiderate twerp" »

Mobile phones are the new cigarettes.

Not when it comes to cancer, of course. That’s still unproven, according to mobile phone companies which have much deeper pockets than this humble scribe.

No, what I’m talking about is the way we’re ditching the fags for another addictive accessory. Instead of going downstairs for a smoko, we fondle the slimline package in our pocket, relishing the thought of our next text or tweet.

Continue reading "Is there a quitline we can ring for telephone addiction?" »

“Real transformative change never begins in Washington.” (Pause for quacks.)

You’ll need to turn up the volume but the quacking is audible early in the video.

Got a story about a mortifying mobile moment? Share it in the comments.