9:23 PM// The Communications Age

Many scholars agree that the advancement and perhaps even survival of the human race is dependent on communication. When Neanderthals and Homosapiens shared the planet,
one species died out and one survived. The Neanderthal had the clear advantage of extended snout, offering him the obvious olfactory benefits. However, such a snout could
not support the complex speech patterns required for group organization and communication. How did we survive without elongated snouts? Simple: we began domesticating dogs
around this time and had Man's best friend to do our sniffing for us.

As we began to explore this world of ours, communication between large groups (countries) separated by large distances (oceans) became difficult and time consuming. News could
take weeks to reach its destination. Arguably, the single most revolutionary piece of communication technology ever invented was the telegraph machine. It was the first device that
allowed information to travel enormous distances nearly instantaneously (microseconds). The telegraph represents a huge step forward
in the communication industry that has gone unchallenged since. (Yes, that's right: not even the internet can compete with
the all mighty telegraph.) Information transfer went from weeks to microseconds with one invention.

While the telegraph transferred information quickly, it was not capable of 2-way realtime interchange. The telegraph had
to be processed and delivered to its recipient. Thus, the second communication
revolution (although nowhere in the same ballpark) was the telephone, which allowed realtime 2-way communication over arbitrarily long distances.
E-mail could be the next revolutionary invention since it allowed the transfer of documents that could be made into
so-called "hard copies". (Of course, the fax machine allowed this already, but this was a clumsy and expensive method, still not readily available to
most people.)

I would argue that today, the most recent "revolution" is the cellular telephone -- not the invention, but the ability
to mass produce them cheaply enough to allow virtually everyone to own one. Some people have even replaced their hard-line
home telephones with mobile devices. (Note: the relative significance of each communication revolution has exponentially decreased
since the telegraph -- that is, the cellular telephone is not much of a step up from Grahm's telephone.)

But now we enter the problem: we are now so connected that we can be reached at any time and any place. At some times this
is necessary: i.e. a doctor on call. But is this really necessary for the average Joe? Why must we carry enough communication power
that on a crowded sidewalk, everyone is talking, but not to another individual on the same sidewalk.

As an owner of a cell phone for approx. eight months, I've had my cellular experience. According to the screwbill, that is my monthly statement of
usage kindly provided by my cellular carrier, I managed to talk over 350 minutes a month on that phone. That's over 11 minutes a day on average.
I recall making about 3 short calls a day. However, before and after the possession of the cell, I neither desired or missed the phone
to any particular degree. So apparently, ownership of the phone provided powerful motivation for its use, and indeed I was fearful that upon
the relinquishment of the phone I would feel naked without it. I felt utterly dependent on that phone, although clearly I'm perfectly happy living
without it.

And gee, it sure would be nice to walk through a supermarket without hearing what like oh my god, jerry did last night.

Not a cellular phone owner? Apparently we feel even the conventional telephone needs beefing up. A simple $10 phone is just
as good at making calls as any other. However, according to authorities like BestBuy, we need $125 worth of 2.4 Giga goodness.
I'll admit cordless phones are handy, but they usually require external power sources, and therefore can't operate in a blackout, unlike
old-school telephones which glean their power from the phone line itself. Let me issue here a statement about potential owners of Gigaphones (phones that
operate in the gigahertz range). Giga is a cool word. It sounds nifterific and future-like. No home is complete without something that bears the prefix "giga".
The makers advertise better performance and extended range. However, my inferior to gigahertz "old" cordless phone seems to perform as well as the giga phones
in the range category. In fact, most gigaphones offer ranges that would (except in extreme cases) far exceed one's property line. So unless you feel the need to
take short walks around the block with your cordless phone in use, the range for a gigaphone just makes it easier for a neighbor to "accidentally" pick up the signal.

Also, it is important to note that by using gigahertz frequencies, this puts the telephone in two unique classes. First, this is the microwave range of the EM spectrum.
This means that it operates more like a cell phone and gets horrible reception if you're in a kitchen operating a conventional microwave oven. Second, atoms
do vibrate at infrared frequencies, and rotate at microwave frequencies. This means if the phone transmission is operating at a resonance frequency of some
biological molecule's rotation (i.e. your brain) it could couple to this state and cause...no body knows. This is the theory behind the cell-phone cancer scare.
No one knows if there is a problem with placing a microwave emitter so close to the brain, so cell phone antennas are designed to reduce microwave radiation in your general direction.
So you decide: should we replace all the phones we use (land line and cellular) with microwaves? None for me, thanks. You cellular and giga users can keep your
death traps.

In summary: communication is vital to the advancement and survival of the human race. However, being unable to find
any communication invention of significance since the telegraph and conventional telephone, I say, "stick with what works,
and don't fry your brain." Reject expensive land-line phones that just advertise gadgets that offer ridiculous, useless features, and provide
you with 5000% your daily recommended dosage of microwave goodness. Reject cellular telephones at all costs. Don't let me catch
you walking around in public on it. Although I haven't mentioned it here, the 2-way walkie talkie function many phones are offering today should
speak for itself. If I don't want to hear your side of the conversation, I damn well don't want both sides.

The world went and got itself in a big noisy mess.