It is a weird situation, one which actually takes me back to 1994 when I had my first mobile phone but no one else I knew had one. I was suddenly reachable no matter where I was but other than professionally no one would bother calling me1 and I couldn’t reach anyone other than on their landline.
I always have been a fan of mobile gizmos and even had a Swatch Pager (watch) so the step to get a very expensive mobile phone, mainly without any real functionality was rather normal.
I do not recall anymore if text messaging was already available in those day and if it were I never really used it before 1998, when I had an Ericsson T28 (yes those ultra-thin and light flip phones), mainly because no one else had a mobile phone or funds to regularly use one.
Today I started noticing how quiet life without SMS is and I admit that at times I wanted to login to the provider’s online platform to both check and send text messages. Surprisingly I have many friends who are NOT online non-stop, friends with whom I mainly text. But using the online platform would defeat the purpose of the living without cell phone experiment. I can not promise that I will not surrender over the next days but today I realised that the mobile’s phone main usage sending text messages is and that life is different without.
Not really but texting IS addictive.
Basically the mobile phone has become an advanced Swatch Pager.
- Way too expensive to call a mobile phone in those days! [↩]
