A post with the same first para appeared yesterday. The post sought to be funny but wasn’t. So the idea is here recycled.
We’d just finished with Siegfried Idyll and were about to hear Four Last Songs. But, as a sort of entr’acte, came the tinkle of a mobile phone. The acoustics of Birmingham’s Symphony Hall are so good I was able to identify the culprit immediately and watch his panicky scrabbling.
When mobiles first impinged on our family I recall someone saying this was how all phones should be. No more naked dashes from bathroom to hallway, no more trudges from one vandalised, urine-smelling cavity to another, no more running out of change. What we didn’t foresee is there would be a price to pay and the unfortunate Birmingham concert-goer was paying it. Perpetual connectedness comes at the risk of public humiliation.
My brother paid a variant of this price. He went to a concert and switched his phone off. Halfway through he began to have his doubts about this but the phone was in a bag and getting to it would have caused much disturbance. The concert was blotted out by his subsequent agonies.
I pay a different price. I cannot trust batteries. So my mobile is always turned off and only used when I make the briefest of calls. I’m a candidate for half a phone but none is available.
And there’s an even heavier price. Mobiles are ideal for triggering car bombs remotely. Not exactly an unalloyed benefit to mankind as the phoner (above) appears to realise.
We’d just finished with Siegfried Idyll and were about to hear Four Last Songs. But, as a sort of entr’acte, came the tinkle of a mobile phone. The acoustics of Birmingham’s Symphony Hall are so good I was able to identify the culprit immediately and watch his panicky scrabbling.
When mobiles first impinged on our family I recall someone saying this was how all phones should be. No more naked dashes from bathroom to hallway, no more trudges from one vandalised, urine-smelling cavity to another, no more running out of change. What we didn’t foresee is there would be a price to pay and the unfortunate Birmingham concert-goer was paying it. Perpetual connectedness comes at the risk of public humiliation.
My brother paid a variant of this price. He went to a concert and switched his phone off. Halfway through he began to have his doubts about this but the phone was in a bag and getting to it would have caused much disturbance. The concert was blotted out by his subsequent agonies.
I pay a different price. I cannot trust batteries. So my mobile is always turned off and only used when I make the briefest of calls. I’m a candidate for half a phone but none is available.
And there’s an even heavier price. Mobiles are ideal for triggering car bombs remotely. Not exactly an unalloyed benefit to mankind as the phoner (above) appears to realise.
