A Hypothetical Question???

Good question - on a personal note I still don't have a mobile device - The Wife & children do, but we could very easily survive without...

Lose the devices - save those Bees!!

cell phones are being embedded in our society.

Like the most of us when we went to college, we had none of that. and if we called home once a week it was lucky.

I personally hate cell phones, but I dropped my landline and keep my cell on at home (most of times) and basically treat it as a land phone. unless traveling for work.

To take that away now, it would be a heck of a withdrawl...........but it would pressure cell phone company's to lower its charges/ uuhhmmmm.

I think the majority of us over 50 year olds would find it not too much of a nuisance...

BUT the youngsters of today almost sleep with their mobiles, they treat them as essential items... Not as a useful gadget.

It got me thinking last night about how society would react to (even a recently introduced item) a complete ban on something which is now taken for granted....

Hi Electroman,

You are quite right, I am 64 years old and have never owned a mobile phone, and never will.

The reason being that I do not want to be in contact 24 hours a day, there has to be at least twelve hours me time every day in my life!

If by any chance I want to talk to someone far away I use my landline, when i'm at home that is.

Spencer.

Not to worry. It's the circle of life.

Cell phones kill off most of the bees. Crops go unpollenated. Humans starve and most die off. Cell use declines rapidly. The bees some day bounce back. With increasing pollenation, the humans eventually rebound and start using cells again. Repeat next verse, same as the first.

Maybe over time natural selection favors cell-resistant bees OR cell-use resistant humans. Or both.

It's kind of beautiful, really.

GA

_{(Unfortunately, being guest, it will not be counted)}

Immediately on reading the post, I thought exactly the same.

I wouldn't miss it a bit. There would be a lot fewer traffic accidents.

Speaking of traffic accidents, I just saw this in the news...

Obama Bans Federal Employees From Texting While Driving via WashPost

Could this be the beginning of a bigger legislative decision on this issue?

----
I am with some of the other people here in that I could live without a cellphone. I'm in my 20s and currently use a cell as my primary phone, because it was the easiest option when I was in college. Now, I am considering going to a home phone when my contract is up....I hardly ever answer the damn thing when I'm out in public or with other people anyway - I think that is just rude most of the time.

It's amazing how quickly you adapt to not having something...why I've even managed without CR4 whilst on holiday.
If we had no cars we'd soon get used to public transport and walking.
Just think about your mobile phone calls over a day or week...how many were essential...
'Hi, I'm in Sainsbury's...which shampoo was it you wanted?'
I mean do we give a sh*t? You buy the wrong shampoo...nobody dies.

Ban all telecoms I say..it's all the work of the devil...or a squirrel...
Del

Electroman

You could rephrase the example to read "pocket calculators" instead of cell phones!

We "Ancients" would have no problem taking our slide rules out of retirement, but the

younger generation would be inconvenienced.

P.S I had A "jammin" slide rule

Best Regards

K

I still have my slide rule!! its sat on a shelf only a few yards away, I never use it though.

The reason I picked on mobile phones was because they seem to be becoming a mixture of an entertainment module with communication facilities, and because I did read a report that Indian scientists had found a link between degrading bee colonies and microwave communication devices (mobiles).

I have a mobile, I was given it some years ago.... I rarely turn it on except to see the time, but I'm sure if I had an accident or needed help it would be extremely useful..

Slide rule not since a freshman in high school.

But one time, I was late for work and grab the TV remote by mistake instead of my calculator.

I almost felt........ naked without my calculator.

Is there some sort of support group for that?

p911

Oh you faddish kids and your new-fangled gadgets!! Aren't log tables good enough? I actually still have one and I can, if I remember to take my Aricept iv push, still use it a little.

If the invention of the handheld calculator had never come out then the "younger generation" would have been taught to use the slide rule as well. There would be no inconvenience for us either.

What do you think the effect would be on todays society if all mobile phones were banned????

No texting SMS language for one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_language

The world has enough acronims as it is, I don't want to learn that "omlp" stands for "Oh My Lordy Potato" and that "tmlae" stands for "The most ludicrous abbreviation ever".

But most importantly I certainly don't want to recieve emails, answer technical questions or review written reports or CV's written in or containing SMS shorthand, which is becoming a rather dangerous and all to common norm for todays students (I am sure many of us here have come across examples of this, and not just on CR4).

Forget the possible invisible (and ignorantly overhyped) potential threat of RF radiation damaging our brains, I say SMS is the real danger created by cellphones to society.

WHO'S WITH ME!

I agree 100% with that.... its too common today to see a message ending in :-) or LOL etc...

If they could speak decent English then they should be able to express themselves sufficiently well not to have to use these annoying 'emoticons' or abbreviations!!

Oh deary me no...to keep up wiv todays youf you need to agree at least 110%

Del 200!!!,

Cockney is English.

Jon

Again?.... it's gone 198,199,200,199,198,199,200.
I'm getting dizzy.
Del

Del the cat,

Your friends are messing with you. check the "Break the Bathtub" dicussion.

Personally I think it would be cool if your numbers toggled at 10000 and 200 at the same time but I wont interfere with it.

Jon

Many years back a study (whimsical) was conducted to decry overuse of statistics. This showed that in the locations studied in New York the density of telephones (landlines) correlated positively with the incidence of cardiac problems. Conclusion: Telephones cause cardiac problems. Later the same data was evaluated from a different angle. Stress related to excessive use of phones could actually lead to cardiac troubles. In the large corporation I work for the chairman was the last but one to get a cell phone. I was the last. Use it minimally. Quite often forget to take it with me. Birds and bees get my vote.

Bio,

The use of margarine in place of butter was around that time and it is well known that margarine is not good for the heart and circulatory system.

It could be said, therefore, that the combination of margarine and telephone stress is bad for the heart.

Oily fingers add to the stress because of dropped handsets and dropped calls.

Jon

Electroman,

Most bees don't live near cel phones or towers. I live near cell towers and the bees are just as abundant as they always were.

There are other factors in the environment that kill bees.

The beekeeper's biggest enemy in recent years has been a miniature, blood-red arachnid called the varroa mite. A remarkably adaptive, ticklike creature, the mite burrows into unborn brood and adults alike, feeding, as a tick does, on the bee's body fluids. It is a predation that slowly saps the strength and vigor from a hive, either killing the brood outright or causing deformities that weaken adult bees and make them more susceptible to viruses. And this mite is — besides labor, pasture, honey prices, pollination prices, bacteria, fungi, unpleasant neighbors and other invading insects — what beekeepers think most about these days.
This varroa mite "swaggers like a colossus across beekeeping in North America."

The parasite, which is endemic to Asia, first arrived on U.S. shores in 1987, most likely smuggled in some eager apiarist's luggage. (Bee importation has been illegal in this country since 1922.) It caused negligible damage in Europe, where it first appeared in 1908, because the beekeeping industry is smaller and far less mobile. In the U.S., however, the mite jumped from hive to hive with alarming rapidity. "In the U.S., beekeepers are a bunch of mechanized gypsies, moving from crop to crop all through the year chasing pollination fees and honey flows. "Because of all this unnatural movement, some colonies get stressed, and they may be more susceptible."

During the first wave of infestation, the varroa killed nearly every feral colony on the continent. Well-kept colonies however, escaped major damage, because application of a common miticide kept the bug in check. Over the course of the next decade, though, the mites developed resistance to that treatment. They acquired immunity to a second compound after only three or four years. And in the winter of 2005, beekeepers realized, too late, that the current medicines were no longer working. No bee pollination operation was untouched.

Jon

Apparently, Alexander Graham Bell is quoted whilst working in a lab in "later life" in Canada: "I could get a lot more work done if that damned phone didn't keep ringing".

I was reluctant to buy one but my son gifted me on my birthday 5 years back. He also taught me how to use it. After that I found it to be wonderful gadget.

I can use it in emergencies. I can be contacted any where if I am not at home.I can send SMS to friends and clients.

If I am out of city I can be in touch with my family and keep them informed my location.If I am meeting someone at any point I can locate the person with help of cell. And so many advantages.

Suresh Shama.

I think the first iteration of the mobile phone was the car bag phone right? I'm too young to remember any technology before that. I think we would have to eliminate that too in this discussion.

Without cell phones, communication would be much slower on a business end which would mean people would rely more on the internet for communication or another new technology that might have been invented instead of the cell phone.

Actually, if you think about it no cell phones would mean that we probably haven't started using wireless technology. That would mean we would eliminate a lot more technology than just the cell phone.

Of course this would also mean that text messaging would have never been invented so the human race as a whole would probably be much literate and have a much better grasp of the English language (speaking from the US point of view). I've noticed that my generation spends a majority of their time texting or talking on cell phones which has greatly decreased our productivity. Heck, I have some friends in college that spend most of their class time texting or on Facebook. I don't know how you can learn while distracted like that.

Cingold,

The Laser Tin can phone would have been the way to go. Better distance than the waxed string.

Jon

Personally wouldn't mind a large EMP to take out all electronic gadgets....then I can sell papers on the street corner

Ah! It would be a relief...

Apart of jokes, I'm sure industry would come up with some solution, like changing the frequency band to another that would nt affect the bees. Or even another more advanced device based om quantic coupling to make communication devices. Who knows? The necessity is the mother of all advances. Its not a surprise that in war times technology advances so faster.

Bhrescobar,

I will repeat this for you as it seems you didn't see it.

Most bees don't live near cel phones or towers. I live near cell towers and the bees are just as abundant as they always were.

There are other factors in the environment that kill bees.

The beekeeper's biggest enemy in recent years has been a miniature, blood-red arachnid called the varroa mite. A remarkably adaptive, ticklike creature, the mite burrows into unborn brood and adults alike, feeding, as a tick does, on the bee's body fluids. It is a predation that slowly saps the strength and vigor from a hive, either killing the brood outright or causing deformities that weaken adult bees and make them more susceptible to viruses. And this mite is — besides labor, pasture, honey prices, pollination prices, bacteria, fungi, unpleasant neighbors and other invading insects — what beekeepers think most about these days.
This varroa mite "swaggers like a colossus across beekeeping in North America."

The parasite, which is endemic to Asia, first arrived on U.S. shores in 1987, most likely smuggled in some eager apiarist's luggage. (Bee importation has been illegal in this country since 1922.) It caused negligible damage in Europe, where it first appeared in 1908, because the beekeeping industry is smaller and far less mobile. In the U.S., however, the mite jumped from hive to hive with alarming rapidity. "In the U.S., beekeepers are a bunch of mechanized gypsies, moving from crop to crop all through the year chasing pollination fees and honey flows. "Because of all this unnatural movement, some colonies get stressed, and they may be more susceptible."

During the first wave of infestation, the varroa killed nearly every feral colony on the continent. Well-kept colonies however, escaped major damage, because application of a common miticide kept the bug in check. Over the course of the next decade, though, the mites developed resistance to that treatment. They acquired immunity to a second compound after only three or four years. And in the winter of 2005, beekeepers realized, too late, that the current medicines were no longer working. No bee pollination operation was untouched.

Jon