A Cell-Free Life by Kent Ballard

Well, Mr. Mailer is still playing hard to get. You’d think a person in a grave couldn’t really hide, though they sure can remain silent. But I’ll lure him out with threats of interviewing Vidal first. So while I keep banging on his ego, Kent Ballard has kindly agreed to join my pinch-hitters. …Zach

 

Some of my friends call me a Luddite. Some claim I’m a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. Some just think I’m…well…peculiar.

I do not own a cell phone. I never owned one and if I have my way, never will. Many people are genuinely staggered by this. And the younger they are, the more astounding they find it. The majority of the world’s population, even in the poorest countries, now own cell phones. They have access to the Internet, instant worldwide news, the weather on any part of the globe, can communicate with the guy across the street or in Timbuktu, can film asteroids crashing into the earth, check their stocks, send and receive nude photos of each other, and generally have a nifty little piece of genuine Star Trek equipment they lug around with them everywhere.

I’ve had people tell me they would rather leave their homes without clothing than without their cell phone.

And in this one, lone, and remarkable instance, I am right and everyone else is wrong, so far as I’m concerned.

The modern American cellular phone is generally agreed to be Ameritech’s 1G DynaTAch, which took a decade to reach the market and cost one hundred million dollars to develop. It became available in 1983. It was heavy, awkward, took ten hours to charge, and had a talk time of about thirty minutes. They sold them faster than they could produce them. Waiting lists numbered into the thousands.

The cell phone is only about thirty years old, if you skip over bulky car phones, that ridiculous-looking brick with a three foot antenna and a weight approaching two and a half pounds. And you know what? We had a pretty dandy civilization before they came along. Yes, you may find it hard to believe, but before we had cell phones we had lasers, had been to the Moon, were flying operational missions with the Space Shuttle, had discovered the DNA double-helix, and even had electric lights.

One writer about my age (60) said that “we are the last generation on earth who will know what it’s like to be totally alone.” But I don’t see that as a necessarily bad thing. Sometimes I want to be alone and not looking at some YouTube film of a two-headed goat my neighbor sent me or texted nineteen boring cat jokes from Aunt Matilda. True, cell phone films taken by citizens of police abuse have proven valuable court evidence, but sworn testimony by eyewitnesses is still taken as gospel in the courts too. How do you think they handled these matters in, say, 1978?

Another thing I do not want is the NSA, FBI, or some podunk county sheriff “pinging” me to know my location at all times, day or night. I don’t want them to time me between cell towers and gauge the speed I am driving. I usually have a good idea of my location, and it’s none of their damned business. I don’t have enough room in my car to haul around forty government agencies, nor do I want them riding with me.

They say there’s no such thing as privacy now, and that’s often true. If they’re going to put me on a list of potential skateboard hijackers, they’ve already done it thanks to the shredding of the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights and the PRISM program that reads all my email. And yours. But if I want to jump in my car and drive to Winslow, Arizona and wait for a girl in a flat-bed Ford to look at me, there’s no way in hell they’ll know where I am or what I’m doing and I like it like that.

But when wide-eyed people ask me, “What if you need to make an emergency call?” I tell them the truth. I can’t, and pay phones have all but disappeared. But if I’m on the road anywhere, I can reach for my CB radio, call out to just about any trucker, and they’ll place the call for me. I’ve done that before. It works very well, bless the truckers. CB radios, I predict, will make something of a comeback after the news releases about PRISM. The technology is so old they’ve simply overlooked it. And if you know how to do it, you can power them up to reach out hundreds of miles if you wish.

During the Boston Marathon Bombing, in one second the millions of viewers on the scene could have called anyone on the planet. The next, and their 4G iPhones were utterly useless. Sheer dead weight. Whether the cell towers were overloaded or if they simply shut them down isn’t the issue. People who had sure and certain communications with the world lost them, and for many that equaled panic.

But the race’s official communications were all handled by Ham radio operators. They never failed, not one. They set their frequencies to call in police, ambulances, emergency services while at the same time helping runners locate loved ones and maintaining an information flow with the outside world. Cell phones just slowly drained their batteries, silent. Think about that for a moment, and you will realize authorities in any area can simply shut down the cell towers whenever they think they have a reason, leaving you literally speechless, unable to contact a soul. You may wish to develop your own backup plan if the government tinkers much more with our communications in the near future.

Like all technology, cell phones have their good sides and bad sides. For me, the bad outweighs the good. They make very large crowds of people easier to silence, and that ain’t a good thing.

Yes, I’m among the last generation to know what it’s like to be truly alone—when I want to be. I can walk back through my woods, sit down by the little creek, and the only sound I will hear is the babbling of the water and song birds. After a bad day, that is peace few people can find. And I will have no beeping, ringing, squalling, or moon-dancing racket interrupt my solitude and gathering calmness. No nameless “officer” will be able to locate me. No hordes of ad agencies will know my habits and send me eighteen pounds of junk mail for outdoor goods. That’s known as targeted advertising.

And I don’t care to be a target.

23 thoughts on “A Cell-Free Life by Kent Ballard

  1. Kent, this is terrific! You’ve made some great points about the limits of cell phones, which I hardly ever think about. I’m ambivalent about my own iPhone. I bought it so that I wouldn’t get left behind technologically speaking; so that I could keep up with emails while away from home (guess I didn’t have enough stress while at home/in the office!); and to call AAA if my car breaks down. But I don’t do much more than that with it, so it’s actually “more phone” than I need.

    I applaud your decision not to jump on the Apple bandwagon. You’re still plugged into the Internet and still on top of what’s going on in the world, so I’d say you’re doing just fine. Thanks for a great post.

    • Gee, thanks for the kind words! My idea of “getting left behind technologically” is when the power goes out. That happens more often than I’d like to think, but I live in the middle of a large forest and my power comes over little more than a Black & Decker extension cord for about a mile.

      The Ham radio operators providing official comms for the race is true. They’ve been doing it for years. These guys carry batteries of all sizes and shapes, gas generators, solar panels, and can run their units off a car battery if need be. I don’t have a link, but a Hammer who was there during the bombing wrote a fascinating article about it. Try to Google it. Thank God some people in this world are organized!

      And I do appreciate your warm welcome!

  2. Well said Comrade. Almost mainstream.

    However, you neglected to mention that while sitting down by your little creek, the babbling waters and song birds must struggle to be heard over the voices in your head.

    Way before cellphones and GPS you worried about Big Brother. You lamented your loss of privacy and went to the woods to find it… but you’re not crazy, you didn’t go “off the grid”. You want the power. You want the convenience. You’ve sort of achieved the best of both worlds, so I’m always intrigued by the arbitrary lines you draw in the sand.

    A sophisticated metal detector makes short work of finding a needle in a haystack, but would be sorely challenged to find a specific single needle in a massive pile of needles. From the generations of painstaking research done on what it means to be truly alone, we’ve learned that emptiness is an illusion. And that hapless soon-to-be victims can’t help but go into that dark cave, alley or basement where they meet terror face-to-face. Move toward the light, there’s safety and even solitude in being just one among many. Being a dark spot in an otherwise lit up space makes you an anomaly of interest to those attempting to achieve “total information awareness”. Especially with your footprint.

    • I figure many of my emails have forced some suit-and-ties at the NSA to blow coffee through their nose enough times now that they have a pretty good idea of where I stand. So, yeah, there’s no real getting away anymore.

      But those who haunt dark caves, alleys, and basements are often prepared to deal with anything else they might find in the dark.

      My main beef with cell phones is they don’t need some Secret Squirrel-type to attach a Lo-Jack to your car anymore if they want to track you for some reason. Ma Bell will do that happily for them.
      The iPhone V actually keeps a periodic record of your travels. That’s too creepy, too illegal, and too dangerous for anyone who just happens to drive past a murder scene two minutes before it happens. Imagine trying to confront that evidence in court. No, my friend, nothing good can come of this.

      • Understanding enough about the technologies arms you to do battle with and counter all but the most determined of adversaries.

        “Locks only keep honest people honest” and megaton-rated bunkers are barely distinguishable from jail cells, so in essence, you’re prepping for the wrong war.

        Think cock-up before conspiracy. Hear hoof-beats, think horses, not zebras. I can accept that you don’t want/need a cellphone. That doesn’t automatically make anyone who has one an oblivious poltroon.

        As to what super sekrit NSA/DHS spy shit is being peddled as mass-consumer goods, the more the merrier! Raise that signal to noise ratio! TIA, like StarWars missile defense, is science fiction. There will always be stainless-steel rats.

        • William, m’ boy, I have ALWAYS prepared for the wrong war. First it was the Godless Commies during the Cuban Missile Crisis (and if you think prepping for a war is hard now, you oughta try it when you’re nine years old).

          Now it’s the marching hordes of Joe Biden clones infected with rabies. And in between those times it’s been just about everything under the sun.

          But it’s a funny thing. The stuff you need in just about any crisis is the stuff you’d need in another. Twice I have had fairly large stockpiles of food. Every scrap was eaten during two bad layoffs. I stockpile water, partially because I can’t pump any when the power is out, and partially due to the rumor here in the Midwest that President Obama orders the septic tanks on Air Force One emptied over the Red States. So what happens?

          We get hit by a tornado and suffered a four-day power outage. I was giving water away to neighbors. Never mind the fact that I’d suggested they do the same, and explained how to do it. They cheerfully ignored me–until they got thirsty. Again, right idea, wrong war.

          If I were to be visiting friends, I’d far rather be in a home well-prepared for a long winter blizzard–in the event we had a major earthquake–than in a home where nobody had prepared for anything.

          I’ll grant you my timing has been a little off, and sometimes I couldn’t see the enemy clearly, but ya gotta eat, ya gotta drink, and ya gotta keep from freezing to death. Radioactive fallout is something I’ve never faced, but I bet I would outlive the happy new owner of an iPhone if we started to get a black rain.

          (By the way, do they have Geiger counter apps for cell phones? If so, order me two. And a hamster and a squirrel cage to recharge them with.)

          And horses? My good man, when I hear hoof beats I naturally remember Occam’s Razor and expect a herd of wildebeests to come charging over the hill!

  3. I share your concern about privacy, and revulsion at the modern fetish for being constantly “in touch”. But I do have a bottom-of-the-range $10 pay-as-you-go phone with a non-registered SIM, which I keep switched off until it’s needed. It recently came in handy to call for an ambulance when someone had an epileptic episode in the street. It’s also useful to let someone meeting me know that the train is late. Otherwise, it’s used so little that I have to remember to make a call call once every three months to prevent the SIM from expiring through disuse.

    • Hello, Shakib! Your comment reminds me of an aggravating conversation I had with my iPhone V-carrying son. Once I was indeed thinking about getting a cell phone. I explained to my boy that if I wanted a camera, I would by a camera. If I wanted to read the BBC I’d buy another desktop. All I wanted was a phone. Voice phone. Period.

      He blew a few fuses and finally told me in an exasperated voice that I was probably wanting something no one even made! They ALL have cameras! They ALL have video screens! I think he gave up on me when I told him I was trading my truck in for a team of mules.

      I know they make mere voice phones. But I am–and my guests are–very limited in what carriers can reach out here. (My home is 84.7 meters from the literal middle of nowhere.) Even so, wouldn’t the circuits in such a phone still allow you to be “pinged?” Wouldn’t they have to find you somehow to route your call to you?

      Also, I read some horror the other day which said taking the battery out of your phone no longer deactivated this capability, as many phones have a second, and hidden battery. That leaves the Faraday Cage. Wrap it in tinfoil or a box of fine metal wire mesh. Call me paranoid (or worse), but having a nameless and faceless government agent riding with me is akin to having ghosts in my car.

      “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.” Sure. Let me tell that to a judge when I get busted for being a Peeping Tom. Mrs. Buxom wasn’t doing anything wrong by walking around in her house nude, so why the handcuffs, officer?

      But rest assured, should I ever break down and get one of these devilish things, it’ll be one like yours. We’ve bought TracPhones to take on trips. I simply don’t know the market and the coverage such phones offer. But I talked 65 miles away to a fellow on my CB radio last night and I don’t think PRISM recorded that conversation.

  4. Good column.

    To tell the truth, sometimes I leave my cell phone at home now and again. As someone who puts himself out there, as I do, I have to remember to pull myself in a bit. I think it’s the healthy thing to do. As for living without one? I don’t know if I could do that anymore, I’d at least need a pager and I’m sure any new pager they make can keep tabs on where you are.

    • Well, like the Bill who wasn’t paid said, they’ll spy on you coming or going and in between nowadays. Probably just as spooky as cell phones are RFID chips. Tiny, almost invisible, but they light up like the 4th of July whenever you’re near something putting out a certain radio frequency. Some credit cards already have them and more are going to them. The stores know who you are in you walk in, your credit history, past purchases, which part of the store you visit, when you leave, and which next store you walk into in a mall. This is what you pay for the convenience of merely waving your card over a reader instead of physically swiping it through a slot. It has nothing do do with your convenience. They couldn’t care if you lived or died as long as your bill was paid. This is to steal and share your information in the mall network so they have an idea of how much potential sales are walking around at any given second.

      Look it up on YouTube. You can blow these RFID chips easily in a microwave oven. Your card will still manually swipe. You lose no information on the magnetic strip. But now your good friends in Corporate America know *nothing* about your presence unless you swipe that card to make a purchase.

      There are a ton of tricks like these.. Confound, distract, and confuse, just like Irwin Rommel said. Or was that Mae West?

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    • Thanks for your interest. I’ve been on hiatus and will be for a couple more weeks. If you want to be on my mailing list please click on the “sign-up” box on the right side of the “Just sayin'” page. Again, thanks for your interest. Zach

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    • Pamela–Thank you for your kind words. If you mean the website design it was done by pros. I’m not particularly good at tech stuff. Please hit the mailing list button if you want to be informed of each new post. And again, thanks for your compliments. Much appreciated.

    • Am glad you enjoy the posts. If you want, just click on ‘Sign-up…’ and you’ll be notified when each new column comes out or contact me from the ‘Contact’ page on the website. Again, thanks for reading.

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    • Hannah–Let me begin by saying this particular post was *not* written by me (Zachary Klein) but a guest columnist named Kent Ballard. He really is a brilliant writer and I’m thrilled you enjoyed his post. Right now there’s a new post written by me every two weeks with occasional guest writers in the off week. Actually right now there’s a column by Sherri Frank who is also a terrific writer. As for donations there’s no need whatsoever. I do have three of me books for sale as e-books and another coming in February. If you are interested just visit the MATT JACOB page on the website and you’ll have an opportunity to read the first chapter of each. Again, thanks for your enthusiasm and interest. To be sure I’ll tell Kent to look at your comment.

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