Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone
John Agar, Icon Books, US$10.36
This
delightful little book is a meaty read that wears its erudition
lightly. It traces the history of the mobile phone all the way to the
1900s when Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi hawked wireless
telegraphy – radio communications by Morse code – to the British Royal
Navy, the usual test bed for wireless communications at the time.
Tech literate John Agar deftly navigates the confusing labyrinth of technical jargon to provide readers a picture of how the mobile phone developed, through interesting vignettes. The first non-military mobile model was built by Sweden’s Lars Ericsson, who installed one in a car for his wife. To make it work, he had to stop the vehicle and connect the phone to the overhead electrical poles. By the 40s,untethered mobile communications grew rapidly, and by the 90s, when components shrank to fit one’s palm, and the price of owning of a unit dropped, these gadgets entered the mass market, sparking a revolution. It’s interesting how cultural attitudes greatly influence the success or failure of an invention. Europe’s diversity made it open to a number of wireless standards as well as the need to make these standards interoperate. Such synergy led to GSM, the second generation mobile system that allowed advanced Asian countries – Japan, Korea andHongkong to wrest the lead in mobile technology development from the US. Several uniquebehavioural patterns have emerged in countries with mass use of the mobile telephone, including texting (SMS) andthe development of new social norms. Mobile phones were not designed to carry data services and the industry was surprised when SMS began to take on a life of its own. In the Philippines, known as the “texting capital of the world”, SMS power helped topple a president in 2000. Eventually, other non-voice services emerged allowing multi media files and video to be streamed from mobile phones.
Gigi Onag