The daughter has a new mobile phone, the wife has a new mobile phone, the daughter-in-law has a new mobile phone. No money has changed hands (it's all to do with the monthly contract) but the technology marches on impressively.
Being somewhat backward in these matters I spent a few minutes in the pub last night trying to figure out what the daughter’s new (and very small) handset can do. It has a digital camera with flash and video (moving picture) capability; it is a calculator and personal organiser; it has an MP3 player; it is a bluetooth phone which means that she can use an earphone thingy when driving and be totally hands-free and unencumbered by cables; it is an alarm clock; it has some sort of Internet capability and can probably double as an electric toothbrush. Translated into the real world of the Ranting Nappa it makes the following possessions obsolete: carphone kit, diary, digital camera, video camera, alarm clock, adding machine, address book and, of course, my BT telephone line (with broadband). Needless to say the Ranting Nappa has no truck with MP3 players, but it does make his beloved Psion Organiser (a 5 Series MX, no less) look positively prehistoric.
As I write a BBC News programme is imploring viewers to phone or text their views on the poor Pontiff’s (likely) demise, and one wonders what the next big thing in phone technology will be. Will you be able to vote by text message in the next-but-one general election? How long before transmitter masts are enhanced with large dishes to enable Sky Mobile TV on your phone? The Archers and Desert Island Discs? Satellite navigation? Obviously ski gizmos such as walkie-talkies, radio locators and GPS thingies – I can almost hear the older brother (bless him) groan - will be rendered useless. Watch your favourite film on your phone? The Green lobby enforcing legislation to make new phones dependent on solar power and be manufactured only from recyclable materials. The Home Secretary announcing that there will be no identity cards or passports in future but, instead, every man, woman and child will be issued with a “personalised” mobile phone activated by Optical Retina Identification.
Probably I’m behind the times (again) and all this has already happened.
Old fogey, less-than-totally-successful bookseller, husband, parent and grandparent holds forth on his own issues of the day.
About Me
- Rumbling Nappa
- Sometimes referred to as the Rumbling Nappa I occasionally return to blogging. This time it is to comment on the Languedoc marriage of my neice, Louise Ticehurst to Rich Astley.