CELL PHONE ANTIPHONY
“Wherever you go, there we are.” – Cellular One slogan
ANTIPHONY: A style of chanting involving a call and response. Since billions of people are called to cell and portable phones every day – and most will be chosen to conduct the biggest biological experiment ever undertaken on this planet – perhaps some responses to this mass culture of addiction and denial are in order.
Did someone say “addiction”?
“In January 2001 alone, over 900 million text messages were sent in the UK.”
[BBC May 24/01]
“This text messaging train just keeps on running on its tracks. We reached $80 billion worth of revenues out of mobile phone simple SMS text messaging last year… Now it’s clear this year we will pass the 100 billion dollar mark… Oh, in absolute numbers, we’ll hit about 2.8 trillion. What is that per day? 8 BILLION texts sent every day. Or 92,000 text messages sent every second of every day.” -consultant Tomi T Ahonen [communities-dominate.blogs.com Sept 21/07]
“Cell phone dependency is now called compulsive communicating. Chain dialers call continually to get another ‘fix’. [Spokesman Review Nov 12/05]
“Mobile phones are replacing nicotine as the foremost addictive obsession in Great Britain.” [British Medical Journal Apr/06]
“75% of British teenagers said they literally could not bear to be without their phone.” [London Telegraph Dec19/04]
“A London detox clinic specializes in helping patients deal with behavioral addiction related to cell phone use.” [Courier-Mail Oct 7/03]
