“For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage.” This is one of Neil Postman’s: Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change; I would ask that you think about this as we look at the birth and use of the cellular phone.

Brief Introduction

Bell Laboratories introduced the idea of cellular communication in 1947 but the first cellular phone call was made on April 3, 1973 by Martin Cooper. He used a 2.5 pound Motorola handset called the Dyna-tac. Its battery lasted twenty minutes and the phone cost $4,000.

On October 3, 1983 an executive from Ameritech made a phone call from a Chrysler convertible at Soldier Field in Chicago to a great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell who at that time lived in Germany; a call that signified the introduction of mass-market commercial cell phone service.

The industry promoted phones to business people as car phones; allowing their commuting time to be more productive. Owning a cell phone became a status symbol, but all that has changed now; 90% of the population in this country own cell phones. Cell sites rose from 913 sites in 1995 to 68,000 sites ten years later. The industry has grown from $354 million in 1984 to $16 billion in 1995 and $150 billion in 2008. Between 1995 and 2008 the number of subscribers increased eight fold and the minutes talked rose 58 fold.  The industry has facilitated a lifestyle of always being connected; it allows parents to be in constant touch with their children, some even say it helps teach children to be responsible; it allows people to be constantly connected to work and it also allows those in romantic relationships to be in constant contact;  however this connectivity has its drawbacks.  Drawbacks include but are not limited to disrupted sleep, carpel tunnel from texting too much, distraction from cognitive or social tasks, loss of command of the English language, and clinical addiction.