The Ubiquitous Cell Phone

Like the personal computer and the Internet, cell phones are a relatively new invention that not only quickly gained popularity but changed the way we live. Cell phones didn't exist thirty years ago, but today they are not only everywhere but have changed our lives and the way we do things in many ways.

In the quiet of the early morning on weekends at home I can usually be found sitting with my labtop in the living room of our home while my wife and children sleep in the bedrooms near by. Taking advantage of not having to go to work, I usually sleep in myself until sometime between six and seven before getting up, working out on the treadmill and then sitting down to work in the living room. The house is quiet and my mind is rested and fresh making it an ideal time to work on our finances, write articles for HubPages or, when school is in session, work on the online course that I teach for the community college where I work.

Sipping a cup of coffee and munching on a piece of toast while I work, I enjoy the uninterruped peace of my comfortable home workplace. Then, sometime between nine and ten my cellphone rings. The call is from my wife who, previous to this, had been asleep in our bed about twenty feet away from me in our bedroom on the other side of the wall separating the living room from the bedroom. Using her cellphone, which was placed on the nightstand next to her the night before, she is calling to inform me that she is awake.

Entering the bedroom, I tease her by telling her that I feel like the butler in an old British movie. You may recall the scenes in these movies where the wealthy woman in the huge mansion pulls a cord by her bed which rings a bell in the servants section of the house and summons the butler or maid to come with breakfast. Unlike the wealthy woman in a mansion, we are just an average two income American family in a fifteen hundred square foot townhouse with no room for maids or butlers let alone a household income big enough to afford such help.

I am sure that the mid-twentieth century movie star Hedy Lamarr, who along with composer George Antheill, designed and patented in 1942 the technique that is the heart of cell phone technology had no idea that this same technique would later be used by teenagers to fill the airwaves with idle chatter and middle class housewives to, at least two mornings a week, enjoy convenience and luxury once reserved for the very rich.

It wasn't until about the late 1980s that cell phones even appeared and then they were mostly bulky car phones used mainly by business people. However, the technology was soon married to the rapidly expanding hardware technology in which the growing capacity and shrinking size of computer chips and battaries soon reduced the bulky car phone attached to the car's electrical power system to battery powered devices small enough to fit in ones pocket (or even clipped to one's ear). Mass production and intense competition soon drove prices down to the point where even people like me whose use of a phone all day at work left little desire to use, let alone pay extra, to carry one around in their pocket, found them worth the effort and money.

Today cell phones are everywhere. They have become so common that we no longer turn and feel we have to respond when the stranger next to us suddenly starts talking - the object of the stranger,s conversation being on the other end of the cell phone call and not us. In addition to my wife calling me from twenty feet away in the bedroom to tell me she has awaken on the weekend, I no longer have to spend twenty to thirty minutes scouring the mall looking for my wife or children when shopping - I simply call them on my cell phone and they come, sometimes from as near as the aisle next to me.

Talking on the telephone used to be a chore that I tried to leave behind at work. But now it is fun. On business trips I am no longer entirely alone while eating dinner as I pull out my cell phone and send a couple of pictures of my dinner to my wife and then chat when she calls back. With our two oldest having moved out - one completely out of state, and the two youngest rarely around, calling, texting and sending pictures has become a great way to stay in touch.

Oh, and one more thing. I no longer have to listen to my children's friends or friends of the neighbors pulling up outside and honking their horns for the person they want to come out. They are still too lazy to exit the car, walk to the door and knock, but now they simply pull out their cell phones and call.