A Case of Reverse Logic.

For about the first hundred years after the invention of the electric telephone the use of the device was a sedentary affair. All telephones were plugged into a socket which restricted the user to the length of the cable, and so conversations were necessarily conducted sitting or standing. But as we all know, the advent of the mobile phone changed all that. They allowed us to conduct our telephonic business on the move, and this appears to have produced an interesting phenomenon.

Time after time recently I’ve watched people using a mobile phone while waiting for a bus or heading for the supermarket, and they can’t seem to do it standing still. They have to pace and pace, up and down relentlessly. And so it appears that the device which allows people to take and make telephone calls on the move has produced a fascinating corollary: people now feel obliged to be on the move in order to use the device. This reminds me of the creature in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy whose defence mechanism was to cover its eyes in the mistaken belief that if the prey couldn’t see the predator, the predator couldn’t see the prey.

And this is, I think, one more reason why those of us who are a little less mentally challenged should be seeking relocation to another world where peace, quietness and reason reign, bodies have become redundant, and communications are conducted telepathically.