The Phone Confrontation

The future stories about a country called the United States in their year 2000 will show traffic jams (which will be the future symbol of luxuriant but barbaric poverty) and supposed “free citizens” unable to use telecommunications technology to the best of its technical abilities because of a small gang of robber barons controlling the local phone company. The joke of 1980s mobile phones is that they resembled a small lunch box held up to the ear. The future joke about “new millennium” mobile phones is that they cost a million useless, fiat dollars to use—and they did little to protect privacy.

For those of us that remember our people, the effects from the way digital communications is “given” to the “citizens” of the United States resembles the effects of the Jim Crow “laws” against groups of Black people assembling in public for any reason. Eventually, even the most properly-assimilated, self-described patriot of this imperfect Union will have to admit that she can’t organize any group of people with the aid of digital technology without the insinuation and dominant guidance of an upper-class third party. All of the cute Star Wars toys of Episode One are already looming about just waiting for a Kentucky-fried Darth Vader to get the empire going in hyperdrive:

• Your supermarket knows exactly what you buy and when.
• Your traffic light knows when you cross the street.
• Your building knows when you enter.
• Your mobile phone knows where you are and every packet of data you send.
• Your DVR knows everything about what you watch and do not watch.
• Your friendly online social network knows what you will buy and who all of your (functional) friends are…So let’s be “ignorant” and assume that people who seriously call themselves “wealthy,” spend a great deal of time “holding on to power.” People who call themselves “poor” often forget about that part about being “rich.” Being “rich” is a fulltime job. At the end of the day, it makes “big men” of both genders hungry. All the toys mentioned above can “serve mankind”—on a platter for any corruptible robber baron to eat. The power to predict earnings by predicting human behavior using metrics of unprecedented resolution is an irresistible temptation. Just ask any healthy urban male anywhere in the world about that girl he likes from afar. Ask him, “Don’t you want to know who she speaks to on the phone? Don’t you want to know where she hangs out? Don’t you want to know what she writes in her email?” It is an error to assume that the boys running AT&T, Google or Yahoo! would not peek at the individual information—yet announce to the world that they are just studying aggregate sets. Remember all those cop shows you watched on Tee Vee when the inspector says, “Pull up his file,” like everyone in the freaking world has a file. Well, now, and ever more in the future, everyone in the freaking world has a file. That’s some of the many “loves” behind one laptop per child.

So me buying an unlocked smart phone seems so very insignificant in view of the immense structure that I insist is being built—but when our Star Wars heroes were in the trash compactor they just grabbed on to anything they could. The problem with this ‘trash’ is that it starts at about $400—an expensive experiment with what really could be waste. My smart phone fee is a little steep because of my desire to buy brand new garbage. The table below collects for the recycle bin:

[](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000982UY2/thekintespacec00A/)	The [*palmOne Treo 650 PDA Phone (Unlocked)*](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000982UY2/thekintespacec00A/ "Buy this phone at Amazon.com") definitely does not look like a piece of garbage. This one was recommended by AG, who from “[Trixbox 2.2—Revisited](http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bkaeg/~3/195473503/000699.html)” you can tell is really into this independent communication thing. However, he recommends buying on ebay.com for lower prices…
“[Palm Treo 680 Unlocked GSM Quadband Cell Phone](http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=204213139&adid=17654&dcaid=17653)”	Out of ignorance I just assume that the 680 is ‘better’ than the 650. Since we are going wild with $400 bucks…
[OpenMoko](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMoko)	Like Google’s non-evil [android](http://code.google.com/android/), this is just a specification—not an actual product.
“[Nokia 6682 Series 60 smartphone reviewed](http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/29/nokia-6682-series-60-smartphone-reviewed/)”	AG does not go for the [Symbian OS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian). Why? Just checking…

rasx()