I have a very old cell phone. Some cell phones take pictures, access the interweb, use GPS technology, cure cancer, and have strange and amazing names like “MontaVista Mobilinux 5.0″, or “RIM BlackBerry Pearl Cellular 1.3″, or “I’m Richer Than You 3.3″, but my cell phone has a mirror. It’s a small round mirror about the size of a nickel. I suppose I should be happy that it’s a bigger mirror than the original model that featured a mirror the size of a dime. Sometimes I imagine working in a law firm or doctor’s office and pulling out this ancient technology to cries of, “What the Hell is that thing?”, “Does it also have a wired feature?”, and “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” That’s right, even in my dreams people make jokes that are complete non-sequiturs; it’s a conspiracy. The point is, this cell phone is so old I’ve wondered at times whether I can use it to call the past and warn myself not to buy it, or at least warn myself that the mirror isn’t nearly big enough for proper drug snorting usage. (For those actually wondering if I know what I’m talking about, I just called it “drug snorting usage”-what do you think?) Even if my phone wasn’t as old as it is, phone technology develops so quickly nowadays that phones are out of date about the time you buy them. Just yesterday I was part of a conversation that went something like this:

Guy 1: Is that an Iphone?

Guy 2: This is actually more advanced than the Iphone.

Me: How big’s the mirror?

Guy 2: I’m sorry, I’m not actually here right now; my phone is producing a hologram that makes it appear like I’m here; I’m busy buying a new phone at the moment; please leave a message after the beep.

*BEEP*

Me: Wow! That was amazing, wasn’t it?!

Guy 1: Oh, I’m not here either.

Me: Is anyone here?

Guy 1: No. No one is here, not even you. We’re all just part of the phone. You’ll get used to it.

It was a very strange conversation. I figure the mirror on that phone must have been huge!

Anyhow, the question is: are all these crazy features really necessary? Do we need phones to produce holograms so that we can have confusing, mind-altering conversations with highly intelligent answering machine personalities? What is the final frontier of cell phone technology? Will the obsession with “more features” ever actually end? (Okay, that was more than one question)

Cell phones are already a ton of different things (cameras, portable music units, portable movie players, date books, calculators, internet access devices, satellite positioning systems, and even… phones)! Maybe we should stop there. The only reason to call anything by a name is to distinguish that thing from everything else that it’s not; but cell phones don’t want to play by the rules. Cell phones want to become everything and still (presumably) want to be called “cell phones”. Well, once we start eating them, I’m not calling them “cell phones” anymore. I refuse! I’ll just start calling them by their most advanced feature (whatever crazy thing that happens to be). This is something we should be doing already anyhow. I mean, we don’t call refrigerators “ice”, because that’s how we used to keep things cold. We came up with a new name when the technology became significantly more advanced. So, we should already be calling cell phones something like, “Portable Knowledge Devices”, or “Upper-Class Signifiers”, or “Palm-Lives”.

Maybe you think I’m just being bitter because my phone has an old scratched up mirror and your phone is a better conversationalist than your life partner. Well, if this article is truly all about my phone, it’s a small miracle that I managed to write so many words, because there’s only one thing I need to say:

My phone sucks– but it’s definitely a phone!