The mobile drone

The mobile drone

On answering my phone to one of my sisters last night I was subjected to a wave of abuse for not answering my phone to her on Sunday. In fact, I didn’t answer my phone all weekend. Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that I ignored it all weekend – aware of its annoying buzzing.

I receive abuse similar to this from a wide variety of people. I am pretty confident that a very good friend of mine is currently not ‘making the effort’ because I ignored him over the weekend too.

When a phone rings, in essence, what is happening is the person ringing you is demanding that you talk to them. This is reasonable only if the receiver has the time or motivation to answer.

Offence being taken from the non-answered is one of the more strange aspects of the modern world. Why should people presume that you wish to speak them? Should people not perceive an unanswered phone call as, if nothing less, signifying to the called that you wish to speak to them at sometime in the future at their convenience?

These people accuse me of being rude and unfair. I would argue the opposite. It is their selfish and unreasonable demands that are rude.

My sister said that she had had a bad dream and was concerned that I’d been stabbed (I currently live in South East London). How did people sleep before the invention of mobile telephony? How has a concept so new become so deeply entrenched into daily life? Let us not forget that mankind has managed to struggle through his existence perfectly well for the vast majority of the time he has been here without his i-Phone.

The social norms that such technology has imposed on our lives so quickly would be amusing if they weren’t so oppressing.

There are wider issues here about us sleep walking into a technology dependent world, the concept of which is not only compounded but made significantly more sinister with the increasing prominence of surveillance.

This concept was most recently put into the debating domain by one David Davis. His overall point is, in my view, a fair one.

This destruction of personal liberty is a slow and subtle one that is enshrining in law many draconian powers under the ‘justification’ of the threat we face by evil doers.

I see no threat. I see no valid reason for this momentum. I see no hope of a change of this direction. I see no end.

I do see a world when I retire where what we consider to be basic freedoms and liberties are confined to a forgotten history.

By then we will have not only lost, but completely forgotten, what it is these people claim so inaccurately to be protecting.

It is time to re-iberalise ourselves. This begins by not answering your phone and continues with not being offended if ignored.