Considering the ubiquitous presence of the bug cockroach all over the globe, with no nook or corner spared (for how long it has taken residence on planet Earth, God-only-knows) and now enjoying august company of the equally ubiquitous cell phone (as mobile phone is christened in North America), reportedly produced for the first time in 1973 by John F. Mitchell and Martin Cooper of Motorola company, people are not talking about the former menace (cockroach) even as they are talking using the hand-held device refusing to leave the patron’s hands. In any case, one is at a loss to decide if the cell phone is heading towards numerically stumping the bug in foreseeable future, if not already happened. Even as models of cell phone in use are getting obsolete, virtually every few days, embarrassing those who were clutching their dear devices close to their chest on observing others flaunting fancier models, the competition among both producers of the phones and also the service providers has turned cut-throat, to put it mildly. At one point, telephone users even deserted the State-owned telecom organisation nearly spelling its doom. The company has barely kept itself above neck-deep waters as of now.

Contrary to age-old practice of only the caller using the telephone device having to pay for the service, in the system based on mobile phone, to start with, both the caller and the receiver were billed by the service provider. The emergence of cell phone and its unbridled success owe in no small measure to the invention of wireless and digital and related communication technologies. Only a minuscule fraction of the mass of cell phone users are aware of this.

Access to information stored in the form of palm leaf stock, long before the now-all-too-familiar forms namely books, files, magnetic tapes, old records guarded zealously, newspaper clippings and what have you perforce necessitated quite a bit of physical effort. All that has totally gone out of favour, being described as cumbersome, time-consuming, labour-intensive and even resulting in fatigue, thanks to internet and the many search engines such as Google, the needed info appearing on the screen of the cell phone at the tap of the screen’s surface, while the phone-user unwittingly staying immobile, the culprit being the mobile phone. Information searching driven physical activity has totally vanished, people resorting to jogging, yoga, gym, walking and so on to catch up on health.

If the consequences of use or over use of mobile phone were only loss of physical activity and forced immobile life, the mobile phone would not have attained the likeness to the proverbial Frankenstein. Seeing nine out of ten walkers in the streets with mobile phones stuck to their earlobes, and worse still, using mobile while driving two as well as four-wheelers lost in chatting is common sight. In the resulting road mishap, the patron of the mobile phone cannot but become immobile for good.