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Catch on mobile culture
IT is mobile phone that rings on streets, in restaurants, in cars and trains, on motorbikes, on malls, in prayer congregations, in boardrooms and classrooms and in otherwise low-tech rural Pakistan, where ever the coverage is available.
Only in about a decade’s time, ubiquitous mobiles have become a part of life style around the world. They are visible every where now and are deeply penetrating in cultures.
According a report, “Tokyo is one of the most connected cities in the world where everyone is constantly on the move and a mobile phone (known as keitai) has become an indispensable tool of everyday life. There are even charging stations where users can breathe life into dying cellphone batteries. This obsession may also help explain why Japan is at the leading edge of mobile developments.”
In Pakistan, since inception of service in 1991, the mobile phone service providers (using both Analogue Mobile Phone System and the Global Systems of Mobile technologies) have registered unprecedented growth of users’ base. Reports are that number of cellphones has passed the number of fixed-line phones. Most of the users remain unhappy on the quality of services. The users blame service providers who in turn blame PTCL and users keep suffering in the process.
Mobile phones are particularly essential to many, specially in our country where conventional phone lines do not work very well, usually get the “wrong numbers” or do not exist in the first place (PTCL teledensity in the country is less than three per cent). Which is why mobile phone services providers should do more to extend their coverage areas?
At the same time there are millions of people who still are getting along fine without this utility because the mobiles are still not affordable for majority of the population or the areas are not covered by the service providers. Even in the areas without coverage, one can see mobile owners glancing hopefully at their mobile screens to see if there is a signal. This has created a new kind of digital divide, similar to the gap among PC haves and have-nots.
Leading mobile handset phone manufacturers are fuelling the surge for mobile phones not only as a utility with richer and faster mobile communication services and new features — polyphonic ring tones, games, hands-free facility for drivers, alarm, email alerts, mobile phone to mobile phone and to the internet and vice versa, messaging, roaming and many more that are lesser used — but also as a cultural artefact with colourful exteriors, snazzy screens and trendy product designs to give users a more pleasurable experience. Wait till “the camera phone phenomenon picks up in local market,” says Mohsin Khan, a manager marketing of one mobile phone handset company. Another reports reads, “one mobile phone company in the UAE is giving Muslims the option of receiving the call to prayer azan on their telephones.”
Teenagers, from upper strata of society mostly, are the biggest market segment. Those who cannot afford continuously crave to have the device. One finds that teens are particularly fond of mobile phones. Since teens as a group tend to exceedingly value to remain in touch with peers and have always been fond of telephones, it is not unexpected that they enjoy the additional ease of mobile phones. It makes their friends more accessible to them at a time in life when friends are important. Why else students sitting in the same classroom should be exchanging messages on their mobiles? Besides peer group bounding, mobile phones also provide young people semblance of adult life style, ambition, eccentricity, sociability, and rebellion.
It is for the younger generation that cellphones are leaving the exclusive domain of electronics and entering the realm of fashion. The demand of each consumer is different, even though the phones are created for the masses. They are becoming a fashion accessory in the personal communication sector. Having mobile with the case matching to the attire is more than a convenience item, or a connecting device, it is a form of culture emerging fast. In addition to spawning clothing trends, mobile phones are being used as a fashion item already. This trend is more than mere ergonomics. With cellphones craze gripping every one, it is easy to overlook the fact that its use may cause an accident on the road side or it may alienate others who happen to be present while some one is talking his (her) heart out.
Mobile phone technology is convergence of different technologies. What is more, they may be used to determine geographical locations of the users in near future. Also, fuel cells, which will generate energy through an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, could replace current short life batteries soon. Voice travels in the form of radio waves and this fact had led to myths about health related issues. An earlier study of mid-1990s that suggested a two-fold increase in lymphoma in genetically modified mice has been disproved. Latest study has found this: “Mobile phone radiation is unlikely to increase the risk of cancer, challenging earlier research which suggested a possible link.”
But there is another side to it. With some people who are awash in a rich information stew and are already suffering from information and sensory overload, mobile phones have become a menace and they have a problem to get rid of a modern-day headache: how to chit-chat on mobile phones in public or how to avoid it? Users can be divided into two major categories: those who use their phones only for urgent matters and those who use their phone more for the people physically in their presence than for the person on the other end.
Sometime back, I thought that I will never need a mobile connection. When I finally gave in and got one and told myself that it would be used only for urgent, unforeseen situations. But now it goes with me everywhere, and is used for everything. In fact, when my reception is suddenly static-ridden or cut off entirely, I get worried. I have come to rely on it, something I thought I did not even need a few years ago has now become a necessity.
Humans are capable of pretty awful things, but they are also capable of beautiful, awe-inspiring things, being polite, knowing how to behave, showing respect for humans in general is a way of acknowledging sense of life, I fear, which is on the decline (if popular cellphone culture, represented by a person talking through mobile on a dinning table in someone else’s home, is any indication). It cannot be attributed to mobile phones though. After all, rudeness was around before the mobile phone was invented. Cellphone abuse is simply a new version of the same old lack of consideration. Intellectuals believe that society as a whole is becoming ruder, ranging from humdrum bad conduct to the more serious misbehaviour. My personal response is, yes, you can take it to anywhere, just do not use it. And if you want to use it, step out. Please! Be courteous and show dignity for human nature itself with or without mobile talking device.
The writer
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