It's not news that mobile technology is affecting all of us in big ways, but it wasn't until I read an article in the current issue of Fortune magazine that it really struck home how pervasive this influence has become.
The article is about "cultural anthropologist" Genevieve Bell, who travels the world for Intel, figuring out how people use mobile media and what the next big thing might be. Here's the bit that made me sit up:
"She relates the story of coming across a ceremonial store in a city in Malaysia that had paper facsimiles of the latest cellphones."
Aha, I thought, people who can't afford the latest cellphones put these up to their ears and pretend they're talking on them, to show off.
No, much stranger than that. "The paper models are burned so that dead relatives could talk to each other in the afterlife."
This raises the question of how they communicated before the advent of cellphones. Were they able to use landlines? Or did they have to send telegrams: "Come immediately. Stop. Matter of death and death. Stop."
And do they talk, or just text? "Wot R U doing?" "Not much. Just decomposing..."
Do they bump into each other because they're too busy looking at their phones, just like on Oxford Street? Or do they pass right through each other?
It raises a lot of questions but it also underlines the fact that when you're stuck with cellphones even in the afterlife, there's really no going back.
Wait, my cellphone is ringing. Could be my great-great-grandfather...
