Mobile telephone: boon or bane?
In recent decades, there have been many advances in the communications industry. Undoubtedly, one of the most important of these advances has been the mobile telephone.
The mobile telephone is a particularly important invention because it enables people to contact other people by means of a device that they can carry around. Before its invention, people who wanted to be in telephone contact with someone had to make the call either from a telephone in a private house or from a public telephone box.
Being able to make a call from a telephone that you can carry about has revolutionized communication by telephone. If you need to contact someone on a business matter, you can use your mobile. There is no danger of your missing out on an important business opportunity because of communication difficulties.
Instant communication from everywhere, apart from places where it is not possible to get a clear signal, has to be an advantage, whether you are in a business, social or domestic situation. For example, it is useful to be able to ring your wife from a train to say that it has been very much delayed because of some problems on the line and that you will be home late. This stops her from worrying, and probably from cooking a dinner that would otherwise end up being burnt.
Similarly, it is a good thing to be able to forewarn someone with whom you plan to have dinner in a restaurant that you are either going to be late or unable to turn up at all. Such communication can save a friendship.
Perhaps the most important advantage of the mobile telephone is the fact that it can be used in an emergency situation. For example, if a teenage girl misses the last bus home, she can ring her parents and get them to come and get her, without having to worry about searching for the nearest telephone box. Similarly, if someone sees a person being attacked in the street by a thug, he can use his mobile telephone to call the police or an ambulance. That could save a life.
These then are some of the advantages of the mobile telephone, but they undoubtedly have disadvantages. One of the most important of these is the intrusion into the lives of others. Some mobile telephone users ignore the fact that they are probably disturbing the people around them.
You only have to travel in a bus or train to be aware of this problem. A train journey can be absolutely ruined by the nearby presence of someone who is using the train carriage like a mini- office. The person spends the whole journey conducting by mobile telephone the business which he is not able to conduct face to face.
Buses are particularly popular with mobile telephone users. Fellow passengers may forgive an urgent call to the boss to say that the caller has been unavoidably delayed, but far too many bus passengers use their telephones simply to pass the time by chatting to their friends. The main complaint that people make about mobile telephones is that people use them to send absolutely unnecessary and trivial information, such as “I’ve just got on the bus. I should be home in about five minutes. What’s on TV tonight?”
There are advantages and disadvantages connected with mobile telephones. I think that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, provided people use them sensibly.
