Good morning y’all. Y’know, I took a ride to Jerome, Arizona a while back and did a little bit of people watching. Now, for those of you that don’t know, Jerome is up in the mountains a few miles south of Flagstaff at the 5,000-foot level. To get there you take route 89A, 158 curves in, about, 12 miles. Awesome! It’s one of those artsy-fartsy “ghost-hamlets” where anyone that can put two beads together can open up a jewelry shop. It is a fun place to visit though, an old mining town with, mostly, original buildings.
Anyway, I watched all the tourists, bikers and the locals. What really surprised is about half of them had cell phones up and running… even while touring the old town area… on the back of motorcycles through the curves! Driving their SUV’s through the switchbacks! A lot of them had those little electronic doohickeys stuffed in their ears, looks like something out of Star Wars. What the hell… I have tried many times to figure out this obsession of being on the phone to somebody to no avail… until last Saturday. I think I have figured it out, it’s not an obsession; it’s an addiction figured out and developed by Nokia, and all the rest of those cell phone makers.
Dateline October 1986. An electronics/radio genius was playing around with the different radio waves in an attempt to determine how many different frequencies were available for a new invention his company was working on, (the battery operated, portable phone). When he reached a certain group of frequencies he looked up and noticed that a few of his associates were staring into space, their eyes were glazed over and they had familiar, contented looks on their faces. What was that look? It appeared very similar to sexual gratification, a euphoric trance. But what caused it? He shut down his frequency modulator and, immediately they snapped out of it, curious, he turned it back on and they returned to their semi-hypnotic state.
After reporting this to his bosses a study was made and it was determined that the given certain parts of the brain, (the part that sends out “we are satisfied” signals to the psyche), is affected by certain radio frequencies and gives many people a false sense of gratification to the point that it could be addictive. Scientists warned of dangerous consequences if these particular frequencies were ever to be used in this new fangled invention of theirs… and then they left the room.
The corporate directors cheered and hollered, “We’ve got it!” They knew what they had to do, put the phones on the market and make them affordable then… charge by the minute. Better yet, offer some free minutes and the charge an outrageous amount when the customers went over the limit. “We’ll be rich!” They yelled, “The fools will never be able to hang up!”
And… they were right!
Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
