I was surprised to find that, in Japan of all places, foreign cell phones rarely work. Almost all of the attendees to the Mont Pelerin Society meeting found that their cell phones don’t work in Japan. It’s not, it seems, that Japanese phones are just more advanced. I’m told it has always been the case. (The new iPhone does work here, it seems. Damn! I wish I had gotten one in the US.) The chip from my T-Mobile Blackberry fits into a rented Nokia phone, but it won’t send or receive email and for some reason I have only been able to place calls to Belarus. (I did get some calls from elsewhere, though.) And I have been able to respond to text messages, but not to initiate any.
It’s made me much more aware of how dependent I (and others) have become on our mobile phones to coordinate meetings, travel, etc.
It’s not that you’ve become dependent on cell phones. It’s that cell phones allow you to accomplish so much more so much more efficiently that when you lose the use of a cell phone, you realize what it was like before you had one.
I’m being picky, because luddites often like to say things like: ‘we’ve become addicted to email’ or ‘we’ve become a nation of internet junkies’. That language kind of minimizes the importance of new technologies in improving our lives.
Thank you for that, as it’s a very helpful clarification.
Still, in the “old days” we took the time (not a good thing, by the way) to be very specific in instructions, setting times for meetings, etc., and now we don’t normally have to do that, as we can use cell phones to make last minute adjustments. In that sense, we’ve become dependent…but, as you point out, that’s not a bad thing.
I would love to have a good excuse to not answer my phone. But, it’s just as important as capital when it comes to my business.