Cell (aka mobile) phone conversations out loud in public. Tory Minister found himself to be against the trend. ‘Here Comes Everybody’ is by Clay Shirky (not Hal Chalky as I at first remembered wrongly; but that sounds like a DJ). Jimmy Witherspoon. Television did not put mirror-makers out of business. Sitting on the loo is boring so we all look forward to the invention of teleport (it would have to be really accurate).
08h37-BST Friday 25 April 2008-CE
Noise in public places makes it difficult to hear the person you are calling on your cell phone and you assume he or she cannot hear you either. Before I got one, I spoke by landline to a ministerial assistant at the Commons soon after a Tory Minister had slagged people off for yakking on their brick sized phones in restaurants. He wanted them banned. The young man agreed with me when I said that cell phones were a great boon to business.
I was in a supermarket one time and after paying at the checkout I phoned Cook Lady to say I was five minutes away. My side of the chat went: “Hi! Sounds like you got a party going on. It is just the TV. I am at xxx. Shall I come round?” I overheard a guy at the checkout talking to the generality going “That would be a problem…” I was just popping in for a cup of tea. He no doubt assumed that I was trying to arrange something more serious.
In his book ‘Here Comes Everybody’, Clay Shirky remarks upon the way people do not seem to mind that they can be overheard as they converse intimately in the bus, on the street, on the cell phone, on social network sites, and on web logs, with their circle of contacts. Clay Shirky points out firmly that (paraphrasing the Jimmy Witherspoon blues number) “It is not the business of anybody else if they do.”
Ever since the mirror was invented, people have no doubt been musing over the frustration that one’s image is reversed left-to-right as one looks in the mirror. However, since the invention of the television camera and screen, one can see an accurate view of what one looks like giving the finger to the camera. My bathroom has a big mirror (the installation of a previous tenant) so that one sees oneself sitting on the loo, even more boring than TV ads.
FIN 10h08
