Why I don’t own a Cellular Telephony Device

While not making this, I still agree with the sentiment.

I’ve been called crazy for a variety of reasons. My digital artwork elicits ever strange and wondrous reactions, my demeanor and always shifting conversational style certainly inspire words like strange and weird and odd. None of this bothers me. Most choose their fashion from a narrow range of “off-the-shelf” belief/culture systems, so strange is an honorable badge, a sign that what one does is interesting to remark.

But what I find most alarming are the reactions I get when I proudly tell others that I do not, have not ever owned a cellular telephony device (you know a mobile phone). This does not make me a Luddite. Indeed I own, or at least use, two laptops (mac and pc), three desktops (high and low end), a range of video gaming systems, from the first Atari to the most recent PlayStation and a range between. I love robots (not love as in marry, but love is in like to break) and am always scouring the net for curious software and new code and devices. And yet when I am on a train or bus, walking through the mall, eating expensive and tasteless food in restaurants decorated for cost, and a ding-a-ring-a-ling chimes its urgent beeps and tones, I am the only one not searching my pockets.

Why do I not own a cell phone? I am not a farmer. I do not have kids as of yet. I am not a banker or vital public servant. In essence, I do not need to be reached at all times. If my car breaks down I walk. If I am going to be late, I move faster. If I want to send someone a message of love or hate or encouragement or advice or scheduling, I do so in long flowering sentences that flow on and allure tears and bitter acceptances. I spell out things and describe in detail. My pictures are not haphazard low-light half directed shots of two-thirds of what I intended. And instead I pull out one of those cameras that gets you into music gigs based solely on the lens size.

Some day. Yes, some day I’ll be connected as I half-jaunt into some forest or abandoned tunnel. But that will be when cloud computing and micro-chips make everyone’s existence the business of everyone else’s existence. But until that day when screens are paper thin and entire lives are meta-data tagged for cataloging and then forgetting, I’ll stay just outside of reach. And besides when some future medical researcher discovers all those cellular waves pumping to and  from your iPhone are causing mass brain damage, I’ll be one of the smartest, least brain damaged persons on earth. And then I won’t need a portable telephone, as flying robot eagle-monkeys will fetch my every whim.

Or maybe I just waiting until I have something interesting to text. Either way.

cheers, Jason Nelson     http://www.secrettechnology.com

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