Twiddling Thumbs of The Future

  

I wish I had my camera with me on those days when I witness something incredible, funny, or something that poetically frames the times in which we live.

The other day while on my way to meets some friends, I saw a man and woman sitting next to each other on a park bench with a newborn baby, having family time together. 


He was texting and she was texting with one hand while breast feeding the baby who had a cell phone rattle. 

This is the point where my camera would have snapped. The expression on the baby’s face was priceless. The poor baby looked as though she or he was saying, “Hey concentrate here or I might bite.” 

I remember when couples went out together and held hands not had hand-held devices. They would spend time alone together without outside interference; not so much as a beep, buzz, or ringtone. The only vibration they had was for each other. 

It was probably totally natural for the park bench family to “interact” like this because of their electronic lifestyle. They were together, yet alone. 


The baby, not knowing what was happening was so in the loop with the rattle. It’s first words would probably be texted.

It’s probably nothing too unusual for those who see it more than I do, but to me it sticks out like a sore thumb. Maybe the family that texts together stays together. 

Maybe I am just a purist who sees the void of real conversations and frowns on scanty conversations generated by heteromorphic thumbs chiffonading words and fitting160 characters or less into a square box.

95% of all text messages are delivered within 10 seconds whereas talking face to face is instant.

German communications researcher Friedhelm Hillebrand did an experiment in 1985 by typing random sentences and counting the letters, punctuation and spaces, he found that the sentences were almost always shorter than 160 characters. 

A light bulb went off in his head. He thought that 160 characters was “perfectly sufficient,” for quick communication. Because of tight bandwidth constraints of the wireless networks at the time which were mostly used for car phones each message would have to be as short as possible.

Today texting is the number one data service used in the world. In 2010, 6.1 trillion texts were sent worldwide or 193,430 texts per second.

Over 18.5 billion text messages are sent each month, earning $60 to $70 billion/year for cell phone companies.

4.2 billion people text worldwide or 3 out of 5 humans; more than the world population in 1975, 5 times the number of FaceBook users.

48 million people worldwide have cell phones but no electricity and charge their phones using car batteries.

In 2009, NATO launched a pilot program to deliver Afghani police officers their salaries by phone, thwarting corrupt middlemen that had been pilfering large portions of paychecks.

1 in 4 pills sold in poor countries are counterfeit. Hewlett-Packard has developed a system that lets Ghanaians and Nigerians text a code from their medicine wrapper to a database that tells them whether their medicine is real. 

In October of 2011, the president of the CTIA Wireless Associate relayed that there are 327.5 million wireless connections in the U.S., which is more than our population. Data traffic is up 110 percent year-to-year, and there is a 50x increase in smartphone data usage year-to-year across all carriers in the US.

People bought $1.3 trillion worth of mobile devices in 2011 alone.

In 2012, 1.7 billion will have phones but no bank accounts.

Astonishing figures aren’ they? As I continued on my way to meet my friends, I saw them on the patio of the restaurant. They too are a couple. Their faces were buried in their individual iPads, while on their iPhones with bluetooth headsets. 

They didn’t see me. I could have been standing there all day unnoticed. Though they didn’t have a baby with a cell phone rattle, they did have a dog (that’s why they were on the patio). 


As I made my presence known by physically reaching out and touching them and causing a shock, they finally looked up from their devices.

So that’s what it takes. Physically touching, generating heat, skin to skin contact, heightened senses, hair standing on end, human electricity, electromagnetism to wake the senses and feel alive.

I have to get out more.