Open Writing

Millions and billions of mobile words, flying every hour from mouth to ear.

Folk perambulating the streets, sitting in trains, driving cars one-handed (wicked this, because it’s illegal in UK) - all with the magic mini communicator clamped to one ear.

All of them transmitting or receiving words of wisdom? Vital information?

Come on!

* * *

We’re in a coffee bar in Leeds. One of the two spotty youths at the next table pulls out a mobile phone.

“Hiya. How you doing?… We’re in Pret… You know Pret. The sandwich shop… We’re in Leeds. Where do you think we are?… Pret. You know. We were in there. For a coffee. It’s near… No, I’m with Paul… Well we just thought we’d come into town. You know like… OK then. See you at seven… Like we said…’’

* * *

OK, so maybe I am old-fashioned. Of course, I own a mobile phone, but I use it so rarely that each time I have to work out anew how to turn it on and off.

Text messages? Never received one, never sent one. Don’t know how to send one. Don’t want to know how to send one.

Maybe I’m a Luddite where mobile phones are concerned.

Remember the Luddites? The Northern textile workers who reacted angrily and violently when mill owners introduced new machinery which posed a threat to their jobs?

The most important open-air meeting during the Luddite uprising - a meeting which directed the workers to open warfare with the mill masters - was held at Grange Moor crossroads.

Those crossroads are just a mile from where I am now sitting, tapping out this article. Obviously there is something in the air which blows across these Pennine hills which induces a suspicion of new technology.

Of course the Luddites were losers. New machines were installed in the mills. Eventually, the mill owners were also losers. Most of the mills in Yorkshire and Lancashire have now closed. Textiles are produced in the Far East.

The world has moved on.

Modern Luddites such as myself will also be losers. Mobile phones are here for ever and a day. We already have the technology to talk to anyone in the world from anywhere in the world, and to see the person we are talking to.

But young people now use mobile phones so frequently as to confirm that they are still pack animals. Apparently youngsters, and all too many of older years, are uncomfortable when alone. As they text and babble away on their mobiles, they display a desperate need to escape from themselves.

Solitary, quiet thought is at the heart of human progress.

Mobile babble is what now fills the gap for people who are too lazy, or too frightened, to think for themselves.

*

On an early summer’s day this year I was walking on a green track near where I live.

The hawthorn bushes were in fragrant bloom. Skylarks were singing clear, beautiful songs.

The sun was shining on the surrounding hills.

I rounded a bend in the track. A man was walking towards me.

Of no! A madman!

He was talking to himself.

No, he wasn’t. He was talking into the mouthpiece of a mobile phone.

“…I can do the garden later,’’ he said as he went by.

When he was out of hearing range I listened to the skylarks again.

I think that chap had lost life’s plot.

Or maybe he never found it.