| Penn & Teller PCC articles by Penn Jillette | Reprinted with permission. |
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Right around the 100th or 200th anniversary of the Statue of
Liberty ("+ or - 100 years," I like to keep time estimates
accurate enough to impress geologists), we did a cheesy TV magic
trick with Ms. Liberty flying around the Twin Towers. The TV
producer had a cell phone. It was the first one we had seen, and
we were way Beavis and Butthead over it.
The following xmas -- my partner, Teller, gave me an extravagant gift of a cell phone. I was the first in my peer group and I would strut around Manhattan with the beige shoe box against my head saying, "I'm sorry. What? I guess I was in front of a building, would you repeat that?" at a couple hundred bucks a month. I didn't use it long. I hate to carry things. I always have a fanny pack strapped on and my Times jammed in my back pocket. I mustn't have anything in my hands. Phones are getting almost small enough to fit in my pocket but computers are a long way off. My hands are just too goddamn big for those Munchkin keyboards (you know what they say, "big hands, big feet - two out of three ain't bad"). Until they have a full-size keyboard that folds up to nothing, I won't be typing in the back of cabs. I have the Toshiba color laptop and, although it's big by monochrome standards -- I don't care. I carry it only from the car to the airport, and if the fascist, hallucinating, pilots have their way and I can't use it at all on the airplane -- I'll have someone else move it from city to city. I don't like to carry things. Another reason I abandoned the cell phone is I just don't use the phone at all much anymore. E-mail is now responsible for most of my electronic communication. Most times I prefer typing to talking. I'm more careful about what I say, I have a record of it, and we don't have to try to synchronize schedules and moods. I log on every morning for electronic business and socializing. But, the friendly juggernaut of technology will not let me catch my breath. The Ericsson guys just gave me a RadioMail set up. It's supposed to be future of mail. It has a flexi-antenna attached to a "MOBIdem," which is about the size of 2 packs of cigarettes (in prison and electronics - smokes are measurement), and it weighs as much as a pack of cigarettes -- if tobacco was made of steel. Attached to it is an HP 95LX. It's too tiny to type normally. When hunched over it, I look like a Diane Arbus photo. It all fits into a real leather case about the size of a book (a large print edition of Harlot's Ghost). You could hook the MOBIdem (I know there should be a Moby Dick joke but I just don't have it) to a laptop and have a grown-up keyboard, but since I don't carry my laptop away from my desk it wouldn't be worth it. RadioMail's boss computer keeps track of whether you're MOBIdem is on or off, and what the nearest base station is, so it can send mail the second it comes in -- with a cute little beep. You send instantly too, so it feels like your always on line. If feels that way, but you only pay for the seconds when data is being exchanged and the data transmission is even cheaper because it uses those weird frequencies that made taxi dispatchers rich. Is it just a fancy beeper, or is it going to change our lives? I don't know, I don't carry things -- I won't find out until I can hire a Sherpa. |