خوشمان بیایید یا نه ، تلفن همراه دنیای ما را تغییر داده است

Easy to frighten the young: tell them what the world was like before mobile phones. Spirit them back to a life before midnight on 1 January 1985, when the first UK mobile call was made on a Transportable Vodafone VT1 that weighed 11lb; if you’d wanted one yourself, you’d have had to stump up around two grand. Be aware that what seems most shocking to you will not have the same impact on them; that well-worn recitation of the hour-long trudge along a dark country road in the rain to call the AA from a smelly phonebox that took coppers might still be vivid in your mind, but they’ll be drifting off, wondering how to circumvent Uber surge pricing when they’re pinging from club to club on Saturday night.

Tell them there was no Uber. Tell them that when you went out with your mates, you made cast-iron plans as much as three weeks in advance via numerous landline telephone calls, each of which was subject to sudden interruption from bill-obsessed parents or housemates eager to get on the blower themselves. Tell them that if your rendezvous fouled up, your options were limited: scrawl on the wall of bus stop or tube station (those whiteboards are a relatively recent innovation); traipse around town, forlornly peering into bars where your friends weren’t; leave touchingly hopeful messages with helpful but nosy mums (“If he does call, Mrs Arbuthnot, could you say I’m in the cafe opposite the cinema and there’s another showing at 9.30? Thank you very much. Yes, Dad’s much better, thank you”). And this is just for a casual night out: imagine if romance was in the offing.

If parental concern and sexual appetite – keeping tabs on your kids’ whereabouts on the one hand and forming and maintaining relationships on the other – have been two of the principal drivers of the mobile phone revolution, the field has long since broadened.

When mobiles began to become commonplace, the difference they made to our lives was stark and simple; we could communicate important information, often of a time-sensitive nature, without being either at home or work, and without relying on the availability of a free phone line. The annoyance they created – the mundane domestic detail loudly recounted on a packed bus, the wrong-footing sight of someone apparently jabbering to themselves as they walked down the street – was worth it. And pretty soon, we got turned on by the additional innovation of conveying that news in text form – no need even to speak to a human being!
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But what is your phone doing now? As it’s the beginning of January, mine has just chirped to remind me to make another alfalfa and wheatgrass juice, though fortunately it has a mute button. The last alert I had was to let me know a very disappointing football result, thereby proving that being kept in the loop is not always all it’s cracked up to be. But like most people, apart from a dwindling band of smartphone refuseniks, I would find plenty more cheery diversion if I were to linger among the apps for a while – music, podcasts, social media, photographs, games. I might do a spot of work on a train, reorganise my diary, blitz my emails, tidy up my fiscal loose ends. It would only be when my train arrived that I would realise I hadn’t opened my book or gazed out of the window.

If the book I failed to open had been a novel set in the last few years, it would almost certainly have featured mobile technology, unless it was deliberately and self-consciously refusing to do so. If its plot was powered by any sort of intrigue – criminal, political, sexual – it would be unthinkable were the characters not to interact virtually, and probably, given the relative novelty of the device, crucially so.

Mobile phones have changed culture and continue to do so; not merely in the nature of the material produced, but as a means of distribution beyond the obvious. A perfectly named example: the compilation album entitled Music From Saharan Cellphones, on which the featured tracks have been transferred from mobile phone via Bluetooth in northern Mali, where music fans habitually and enthusiastically swap and spread music. It’s available in this country, headbendingly enough, on vinyl.

For music-mad residents of North Africa, sharing music by mobile telephony is a creative response to an obvious situation: a way to connect with culture being produced in sparsely populated areas without an established network of exchange. For me, in north London, it’s an exciting piece of eavesdropping: I’m unlikely to hear the music of Group Anmataff or Mdou Moctar otherwise.

Supplementary question: do I need to? Is my world widened by easy access to whatever my eye or ear might alight on or is it diluted, my attention weakened by an excess of possibilities? Do I become dismissive of what is near at hand, increasingly avid for exotica?

We know from repeated examples across the world the vital part that mobile phones have played in rapidly developing political situations, connecting protesters to one another and the outside world, documenting abuses and victories alike. We know how valuable they can be in tracking people; much was made in the recent podcast, Serial, of the limitations of the technology available to pin down someone’s location and account for their phone usage back in 1999, when the crime that was its subject was committed.

But there are times when we are also enslaved by innovation; where what seems to connect us can in fact separate us – from one another and from our own lived experience, a thought that struck me on New Year’s Eve, at a few minutes to 12, when everyone in my sitting room was – albeit briefly, for they are well mannered – engaged in some or other screen-based mission.

Is a concert a concert if you don’t Instagram it? Is an untweeted thought worth a fig? If you don’t log your gym session will your cardiovascular capacity really increase? A resounding yes to all three. And here’s a question we’ve all wanted to ask: all those people chatting happily away on the way into work every the morning. It’s 8am. It’s cold. We’re all tired. Nothing’s even happened yet. So who on earth are you talking to?