no-mobileDoes anyone else feel a little bit tech-spoiled? Now that I have a 3.5G phone (Nokia E71 and loving it) and an unlimited data plan, I’ve noticed that whenever I have to wait for something – anything – regardless of how long it may take – from less than 1 minute to 10 minutes, I automatically sit down, whip out my phone and fire up Opera Mini. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’m unbelievably happy to have the internet at my fingertips anywhere and almost everywhere, subject to the infrastructure of my service provider.

Nevertheless, it leaves me wondering as to exactly how spoiled I am and how impatient I’ve become. Where previously I would have been happy waiting for my take-away by staring off into space and contemplating life, the universe and immortality, I now find that if I have nothing in my hands to tap away at or read, I become restless to a point bordering on an anxiety attack. My heart rate speeds up and I start to sweat a little. What do I do? Why are they taking so long? Oh, maybe because only 2 minutes have passed. Is it ready yet? Then the anxiety picks up. What if someone is calling me? What if my car breaks down on my way home? What do I do? Best start planning for an emergency. I never get to actually finish planning my ‘emergency plan’ because at this point I’m usually interrupted by a slightly bemused waiter giving me my food. And then there’s the added anxiety of coming across something that you feel it’s absolutely pertinent to your well-being that you inform the whole world about it via Twitter and not having the means to do so. The second I get home I rush to my phone to check any missed calls or messages (and feel slightly offended when there aren’t any), and thus ends another saga of the forgotten mobile phone.

The problem herein, I think, lies in the fact that we place such high expectations on mobile phones. They’re everything to us – from being our personal secretaries to our cameras to our computers. And the number of applications for the damned things are increasing exponentially by the day. Earlier this year, a Malaysian man reported that he located his stolen car within hours of it being stolen with the help of his mobile service provider’s tracking system. Earlier this week, the BBC reported that the Peruvian navy is using mobile phones to report diseases to a central database to track and prevent outbreaks. Recently, a Japanese university announced that they were giving iPhones to students as a means of taking attendance. I kid you not.

How is it that the damned devices have become so pervasive? How did it ever come to this point when leaving your phone at home is grounds to immediately turn the car around or suffer an anxiety attack? What will the future hold for us if mobile phones keep being so efficient in entertaining us every spare second causing us to become impatient and anxious for every second when we have nothing to keep our attention? I fear that someday, we will live in a world that is inaccessible to the immobile-phoned, where a mobile phone has pervaded every aspect of our lives and given birth to a generation of the impatient and bratty – The Mobile Brats.