Signing off on cellphones

I had a liberating experience last month.? I cancelled my cellphone service.

In the grand scheme of things, doing so was hardly a revolutionary act.?Still, it made me feel freer and better.

I?ve never been much of a cellphone user anyway.?I bought my first one many years ago, from a winsome woman whose sales skills were enhanced by her engaging personality. I experienced ?buyer?s remorse? almost immediately.?I kept buying the next best thing in cellphones through the years, more out of habit that necessity. ”

Now, I?m trying to simplify my life.?I even bought a book called, appropriately, ?Simplify Your Life.? Some of the ideas seem a bit radical, but I?m willing to try some of the others.

To me, cellphones are just one more example of how complicated we?ve made our lives in modern times.?The myriad marvels of contemporary communications give us the capability to be in constant contact with the outside world.?Whether that capability is a good thing or a bad thing is, for me, an open question.

For example, I was having dinner at a fine restaurant in Nashville recently. A family of four occupied a table near me.? What could have been a memorable dining experience for them was marred by the fact that the husband and wife, daughter and son, were all yakking away on their respective cellphones.?They continued their virtual conversations right on through the expensive meal, apparently oblivious to it and to each other. So much for ?family night out.?

Cellphones are pervasive and intrusive in our lives today.?So are rude, inconsiderate cellphone users.?We see them every day, distractedly driving our highways and byways or plodding zombie-like through malls and stores. Some even refuse to turn off their cellphones in church, court or at a funeral. Psychiatrists could have a field day with this fixation on cellphones ? if they could be weaned off the cellphone long enough to reflect on it all.

Cellphones are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to portable communications and entertainment technology.?There seems to be a gadget or gizmo for every taste.?Their common effect is to further depersonalize our daily lives.??Interactive? used to mean ?Interpersonal.? Not any longer.

Lest I be labeled a Luddite, I?m not opposed to all new technology.?I?m just against taking it to ridiculous extremes.? Chances are, you won?t find me emulating Ned Ludd, the original Luddite, an 18th century English farm worker, who destroyed two new-fangled stocking frames in a fit of anti-new technology rage.?I?m pretty sure I won?t be attacking any unsuspecting cellphone users any time soon.

Instead, I have voiced my own protest by silencing my cellphone. And I will continue to eschew iPods, Blackberries and most other tools of the new communications technology ? except for my indispensable word processor, of course.

Happy New Year!

Thomas B. Vaughn is a professor at Motlow College and co-host of the radio show ?Viewpoints,? which airs on 91.3 FM.