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Cell phone karma
On a Metro-North commuter train heading out of New York’s Grand Central Terminal, a man using a train toilet while also using his cell phone drops the phone in the toilet. The man reaches into the commode to retrieve the cell phone. His arm gets stuck. He yells for help, the train is halted and firemen come aboard and dismantle the entire commode as the Metro-North system is thrown into confusion and thousands of commuters are delayed. After 90 minutes with his arm stuck in the crapper, the man is cut free. The cell phone is not recovered.
The essence of cell phones is that they free people to make telephone calls in situations and in a manner in which, in any civilized order, telephone conversations should not occur. Thus, while the above incident is extreme, it is but a logical consequence of the postmodern achievement of liberating telephones from fixed and appropriate locations, so that human beings, crazed with the expanded freedom and convenience that is being offered to them, can carry on phone conversations literally everywhere, even while using the toilet in a moving commuter train. Email entry |