By Amendra Pokhrel
Mostly all religions, with Hinduism putting particular emphasis on the notion, have portrayed God as being omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. But it’s all abstract. In reality, the only thing that comes close to those attributes is perhaps mobiles.
When computer was invented and subsequently made available for popular use, it was believed that this technology would make people depend on it for everything. Invention of internet and laptops, both of which added mobility to the computers, further reinforced that belief.
Until recently, nobody had realized that mobile, the tiny device that carried the same genetic makeup as computers but was initially limited to sending and receiving calls, would evolve so fast to steal away all the glamour from computers and laptops.
But here we are watching the still unassuming device growing and transforming into a material world’s version of gods “omni” attributes.
Mobiles are omnipotent because their functions enable us to carry out all the major tasks that define our lives today: communication, consumption and entertainment. Omniscient because once linked to the internet, we have all the information we need. And omnipresent because with mobiles, you have access to everything and are reachable anywhere.
But these pervasive qualities -- with their unbridled capacity for intrusion and to define and shape our world -- might one day prove to be mobile’s Achilles’ heel.
Concerns of privacy apart, mobiles have been blamed for distorting social behavior to the point that social interaction may no longer be viable in near future.
I have a friend who carries a smartphone and is always in search of a corner where WiFi is available. He goes up and down a building, scurries from one room to another until he finds the signal. He is always either downloading something from the internet or updating his facebook account.
Though he is not as withdrawn or has gone incommunicado as the young people in high mobile use country but that could soon change. Why? Because right now not everyone around this friend has a smartphone. As soon as we have more people flaunting smartphones and access to cheap or free WiFi, just as in the developed world, we’ll have more people hooked on to mobiles.
Researches in developed countries have shown that excessive mobile use has led to isolationism. A study in Japan has found that young users are becoming less capable of direct, social communications. They rely too much on technology to converse. “They’re often intelligent in collecting information but not in utilizing it. I’m often surprised by their awkward emotional responses,” a respondent in the study said.
These findings point to the fact that obsessive users of technology become geeks; meaning technologically smarter, but socially gauche.
Mobiles have also been blamed for killing casual conversations. Even today we can notice a trend that people traveling or visiting shopping malls together prefer to fiddle with their mobiles or play video games rather than start a conversation. And with apps like Google MAPS, people in highly developed countries no longer need to ask strangers for direction or location.
Mobiles can be useful and fun, but they can also be irritating. While during face-to-face interactions the volume is moderated by the surrounding in which they occur, a research has pointed out that mobile leads its users to believe that they are entering a private space shared only by the parties on the phone.
A few days ago, a man on a motorcycle stopped right outside the window of my ground floor flat that is just a few feet away from the road and started hurling curse words at somebody on the other end of the phone. He seemed like a decent man who would not otherwise make a public display of his mastery on profanity, but for the illusion of intimacy created by mobiles.
Talking loudly, however, alone is not the problem. We encounter people at public places listening to music without headphones and in full volume or playing video games with the sounds on even though they realize that they are putting others at discomfort.
As a consequence, certain kinds of spaces have already been deemed inappropriate for mobile use. Trains in Britain, Japan, Switzerland, and the US now have ‘quiet cars’ or carriages. Restaurants in many cities have introduced ‘no-mobile’ policies or ‘mobile-free’ zones in an attempt to maintain the sense of privacy and personal space.
Mobile companies are going after consumers in an unprecedented manner and young people, particularly, don’t seem to get enough of these devices. They are glued to these devices every moment they are awake, therefore, mobiles are more likely to dictate their social behaviors and lifestyles than anything else.
But mobile companies would do well to reflect on some of the above examples as evidence that their aggressive approach could prove to be overkill and subsequently a turnoff.
The writer is a copy editor at Republica. He can be contacted through amendrapokharel@gmail.com.
