* Cell-Phone Youths

In response to my wife's blog entry, on the subject of new technologies and student communication (oh, there's a picture of her there: "pretty hot, for a wasicu (winyan), en'uh?"), I would like to comment upon the cell phone as an pretty much an entirely novel habitus. This techno-phenomenon has created a whole new sense of "place" for, say, the college students on this campus—and for me. Besides being personally irked by the person behind me yelling "Tom"—and turning around to see that the person is talking to a "Tom" on the phone, I must note that, in general, the cell phone has created a strange breakdown of "borders," a weird going-public w/ one's own personal life. For instance, I can recall at least two instances, in the last year or so, of students sitting on a campus bench or stoop, bawling their eyes out w/ phone to ear, obviously having just learned—on their cell phone—that a significant other has just died. (Hey, in "my day," we at least had the courtesy of doing that initial mourning in the privacy of our homes.) More petulantly, I also can't get over walking into a campus bathroom and hearing a student talking on his cell phone while he was taking a shit. It was bad enough that I knew of such multitasking: my biggest question was—did the person on the other end know it?!

I guess my biggest/general beef is with the erasure of any time "alone," and/or with one's immediate environment. I can understand necessary calls; I can't understand how 2/3's of the students on the UNL campus seem to have to have a phone (or iPod) at/in their ears at all times—as the cardinal and catbird are waxing eloquent with their wonderful courtship songs; as the trees themselves "stand" for something more wonderful than all human discourse. . . . That's what I have trouble stomaching in this whole botched human scenario.

(Yes, I have an iPod myself—but I use it mostly as a backup for my iTunes and iPhoto[s]. When I need to "crank the [I]tunes," headphones thru my PowerBook work just fine, thank you. [Geez, I sound like such an old fogey.])