k wrote:
] ] Wearable cell phones will start making their way into the
] ] U.S. over the next 12 months -- and by 2007, 20% of U.S.
] ] cell-phone users will likely be donning haute couture
] ] phones
]
] [ I'm all for it. With bluetooth and UWB, there's no reason
] the transciever needs to be near the speaker/mic. -k] Anyone remember the old Ray Bradbury shorts that were a television show? There was one where everybody has lapel phones. I can't remember the title of that short, but it was really neat for its time. The premise is a guy is introduced into a society where everybody is walking around with these phones and constantly talking into them, ignoring actual people as they walk by, having conversations with the air. Not accustomed to it, the guy goes mad, and the way it was filmed conveys that frustration very well. I always used that as an analogy for the current cell phone craze. Now that they lapel phones are coming, I see Bradbury as prophetic. Here's to hoping Fahrenheit 451 doesn't come true though. [EDIT] This is the episode: http://www.scifilm.org/tv/raybradbury/raybradbury5-2.html In the TV adaptation, they used lapel phones rather than radio wrist-watches. ... Bradbury scored yet another prognostication bull's-eye in his 1953
short story "The Murderer," wherein a man is imprisoned for wrecking
"machines that yak-yak-yak." The most offensive devices were the
"radio wristwatch" communicators. Said the electronics murderer: "... my friends and wife phoned every
five minutes. What is there about such 'conveniences' that makes them
so temptingly convenient? ... Convenient for my office, so when I'm in
the field with my radio car there's no moment when I'm not in touch.
In touch! There's a slimy phrase. Touch, hell. Gripped! Pawed,
rather." As retribution, the murderer jams radio wristwatch signals on a
commuter bus and delights in the "terrible, unexpected silence" he
creates: "The bus inhabitants faced with having to converse with each
other." RE: BW Online | June 21, 2004 | Your Lapel Is Ringing | 
