CELL PHONE MADNESS

 

Before my partner began the long RV journey, we bought an extra cell phone and made sure that we could call each other easily. ICE numbers and contacts were added to the phones. We each had copies of the phones’ manuals. We were confident that we would stay in touch daily. What could go wrong?

It worked well as he drove from California through Nevada and Utah. Then he didn’t call for four days, and I panicked when he didn’t respond to my voice-mail messages. Had he had an accident? Was he ill? Had someone hijacked the RV? The temperature in Utah was over 100 degrees—had he been overcome by heat while boondocking? My imagination is better than my common sense when it comes to disasters.

At last he called, blissfully oblivious to my worry. He had been camped near Dinosaur National Monument, out of cell phone range, and in a small campground where the pay phone didn’t work. He had simply assumed I would realize he was traveling through an area with numerous dead zones and  might not be able to call often.

There is a problem here, aside from the obvious Men from Mars/Women from Venus difference. Before cell phones became ubiquitous, no one expected to stay in contact with others under all circumstances. Occasional long-distance calls and postcards were enough. Now we demand instant access to our friends and business associates. One woman I know says her pet peeve is people who turn on their cell phones only to make calls! I can hardly blame them for wanting to be untethered. Must we always be available for anyone who wants to reach us and doen’t even want to bother with voice mail?

When other RVers heard my story, they sympathized, but with some I also detected an attitude of annoyance that we didn’t have some higher-tech communication system. They seemed to feel that GPS, satellite devices, and God only knows what else are essential for the good life in an RV. I disagree. Though my anxiety would have been allayed, my partner would have spent too much time fiddling with electronics instead of studying the dinosaur fossils that were very important to him. He might just as well have watched television at home.

Fifty years ago the English actor Dirk Bogarde starred in The Servant, a powerful psychological film about how the roles of master and servant were reversed. It was primarily a comment about the English class system, but I also interpreted it another way: When we depend too much on a servant like technology, it may become dominant over us. I had depended too much on our cell phones in this instance, and was betrayed by the many dead zones. Others go off too far into the wilderness carrying gadgets that can broadcast their latitude and longitude, and risk injury or death; or they depend on a ghostly voice in the RV to tell them which way to turn, and it gives them bad advice.

There is also some research indicating that using too much technology is harmful to the creativity and thinking skills of both adults and children. We need to retain our abilities to memorize, to imagine, and to make simple calculations without relying on computers.

I am no Luddite, and have no desire to return to life without my laptop computer and cell phone. On the other hand, I need to keep them in their place as tools to be used with discretion. I can live with some uncertainty in return for not being burdened with too much technology.