THE SELF-PHONE

Part 1: Political Meltdown

Be honest. To say that you’re addicted to your mobile is a gross understatement. It’s the first thing you squint at in the morning and the last thing you see before you fall asleep. You check it in the middle of the night when the bathroom beckons and check it at the traffic lights between depressing the clutch and engaging neutral. This is no faddish obsession with new technology. It’s goes much further, much deeper than that.

You turn to your mobile for literally, everything and it would be easier to list the things you don’t use it for, than do. You ask it everything too, from the dates of sixties number ones to the height of the actor you’re semi-watching on TV. So used to instant answers are we, that pub based disputes are now limited exclusively to opinions of Trump and Brexit. Yes, the drinking man’s unique ability to recall trivial statistics has been emasculated by Google. Yet another blow for middle aged men.

When your house is burning, of course, the iPhone must be saved before you struggle with pyjama bottoms. When your daughter sits down to break some serious news, there’s still a couple of free micro-seconds, as she takes a deep breath, to sneak a peek at your Samsung smartphone (sorry guys, a Galaxy will always be a chocolate bar) to see if somebody else out there needs you. ‘Are you listening to me or what?’ ‘Yes, yes, I’m waiting to hear from the bank, sorry darling.’ The love affair is complete: it’s turned us into compulsive liars too. It’s as if we’ve all regressed into needy six year olds, in constant need of attention and affirmation of our existence. ‘Mummy, Mummy, look at this.’ ‘What is it dear?’ As we grew up it slowly dawned on us that Mummy wasn’t really that interested in the microscopic details of our existence after all. She was pretending. But now we all have a friend that really is.

The cellphone has become the self-phone. It’s a part of us now. When we reach into a pocket or purse to press the tiny touch button with the tip of our finger, we are connecting to all human knowledge from the Great Overlord of Data, to GOD himself, just as Michelangelo depicted Adam. The screen lights up to tell us we are alive and at the centre of the universe. There’s no going back now.

Incidentally, how many times have you glanced at your GOD since you started reading this? Two, three maybe? You are not alone. Without question, Steve Jobs’ legacy is the iPhone. Not anything else beginning with a lower case i. I have the extreme condensed version of man’s evolution in front of me. It reads: Fire, Wheel, iPhone. (IBM can just shut up about Simon)

Seriously though, Mankind was the ape that mastered communication. It’s how we learnt to build fires, wheels and smartphones. But now that we are finally all connected on this planet, we are only just beginning to witness the almighty power that will be unleashed. News organisations struggle to keep pace with Twitter feeds. The leader of the ‘free world’ demonstrates his true strength with 140 characters, not via mundane press conferences. Much as this may be unpalatable, you must know this is the start of something big. If you think Uber upsetting a few cabbies and AirBnB aggravating the tax man is troublesome, then you’d better hold tight for the political revolution that is surely coming.

If the rise of populism is a slap in the face for the establishment, the angry reaction from the overlooked and the ordinary, then the only question we must ask is whether they will happily return to their quietly submissive roles of letting government get on with the complicated business of running the country. Judging by the yards of Twitter vitriol I read every morning, I think not. The disengaged are now fully engaged. Forever.

A handful of years ago we would have muttered our discontent as we turned the page to the sports results. Today’s leaders can only dream of such a remote and disinterested populace. So hear this Trump, Netanyahu, Merkel, May, even Putin, Assad and Erdogan. We’re all watching you now.

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