Well, the good news is that the asshole sitting in front of you who took that call in the middle of the super dramatic and or touching moment during the last half hour of the future Oscar nominated Kung Fu Panda 2 this Sunday afternoon, and who’s whispering voice is louder than most toddler wails, is going to die a horrible screaming death, unable to recognize even his closest loved ones as the thing growing in his head lurches one final time and mashes all that was him against the inside of his skull and explodes.
The bad news: so will all of the rest of us otherwise thoughtful, conscientious movie goers.
You see, in the future, your cell phone has murdered you already.
In the industrialized world, everything we eat, make, or look at is killing us, so it should come as no surprise that something we’ve often been told is probably killing us is probably killing us. Tuesday the World Health Organization released the results of a study that suggests that cell phones may cause cancer and are categorized as being as hazardous as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform, making them basically as dangerous as anything else made in China.
See, cell phones emit non-ionizing radiation. The kind that the article describes, saying it like it’s a good thing, as “like a very low-powered microwave oven.”
“What microwave radiation does in most simplistic terms is similar to what happens to food in microwaves, essentially cooking the brain. So in addition to leading to a development of cancer and tumors, there could be a whole host of other effects like cognitive memory function, since the memory temporal lobes are where we hold our cell phones.”
We are holding tiny microwave ovens to our heads and nuking our memories.
So what will be done? Well, if you said “With the swiftness of the angels choir, we, the consumer, will take this new found knowledge, given to us by those looking out for our own best interest so that we might better preserve our personal well being, and use it in the manner intended, to protect ourselves from those who might instead have their own personal gain as their most prescient thought. While those responsible for the manufacture and sale of these products will surely see that theirs is a dangerous gadget and will redouble their efforts to safeguard their precious customers, of whom their entire existence relies, to ensure that in the future they are delivering nothing but the finest quality product for the money because it is what the customer deserves, and what they certainly don’t deserve is a brain full of cancers.” then you were clearly born sometime during the reading of this article and that the well reasoned and insightful response of a mind not privy to the selfishness and stupidity of the world that awaits you, while certainly sounding measured and clear in your newborn head instead likely came out only as a mouth full of goo followed by a scream fueled by your first breath of life.
The truth is of course that this will change absolutely nothing. We’ve known since the advent of the cell phone that holding something against our head that is shooting invisible beams into space which are in turn being shot right back through self same head at the speed of light probably isn’t the best thing we could be doing to it, but that doesn’t stop us from buying the newest one the second we are legally allowed to. Knowing that our phones are cooking our gray meat isn’t going to keep us from using them. Sure, I might get myself a new hands free ear bud, but then the second that stops working I’ll be pressing my skull roasting rectangle back to my face and jerkeying my memories again.
The simple fact of the matter is that they could call the damned thing the iTumorer 4GT and there would be a line around the block for it come release day just so long as it had three cameras, weighed a 64th of an ounce less and had 64gigs to put all of the music that we’d forgotten why we liked because that part of our brain now had the texture of over defrosted chicken.
You know how many cigarettes are still sold in the world every day? Neither do I, because I’ve got more important things to do than count cigarettes, but the point is, there’s still a lot, and what’s crazy is that new people begin smoking every day. Cigarettes are now sold wrapped entirely in warning labels that tell you plainly that inhaling the cylinders held within will give you a fatal disease or your money back, and people are still buying them. People who have never lived a day on this planet without the knowledge of this inevitability are STILL STARTING to do this thing as I type this. People could not be warned about the dangers of this entirely legal item any more if the only way they could buy them in the store was if they had to recite the entire Surgeon General’s warning along with their brand before being given a pack. So telling people that the rectangle in their pocket that contains their entire life might kill them isn’t going to phase anyone.
Did you also know that every time you have ever used your phone ever, you’ve been doing it wrong, and Apple has desperately been trying to protect you this whole time. In the iPhone user manual it says that in order to not exceed FCC radiation exposure guidelines while using it as it’s designed to be used to, “keep iPhone at least 15 mm (5/8 inch) away from the body.” They’re fully aware what they have to say they told you about not cooking your brain, and they’re just as aware that you’re not going to read that, or if you did, you probably chuckled and thought how stupid it was. It doesn’t matter how impossible that would make the USE of your “phone” in what is supposed to be its primary function of listening to someone on the other end relaying verbal information through a speaker that wouldn’t work well enough if you implanted it in your skull. You’re holding it too close to not get cancer, so it’s your fault if you didn’t use their product as directed.
So in the end this new found knowledge is going to do exactly nothing. People are going to continue using their cell phones with the full understanding that it is slowly killing them and they’re simply not going to care. So really, is it actually better to know exactly what’s killing you, or to just go on assuming that everything is, knowing that you’re probably right anyway? In the meantime, if you want to get a hold of me, buy a stamp and make sure it’s worth a week for my response. I’ll be in the lime pit I’ve dug in my backyard and covered with moss and wishes. That ought to keep me safe, at least until scientists tell me that wishes give you AIDS…
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