Barun Roy: The age of the mobile zombies

ASIA FILES

This October, India crashed through the fixed-phone barrier and entered the Asian cell phone big league. After a decade-old love affair with the fashionable toy, 45 million Indians are now said to possess mobile phones, overtaking the 44 million who have landlines.

China had broken that barrier a year before, when it had 269 million users of mobile phones against 263 million subscribing to landlines. That number might cross 300 million by the end of this year.

It's a wave that shows no signs of abating. Being a hugely under-exploited market, India keeps adding 1.8 million new customers to the pool and, analysts say, will have 200 million mobile phones in use by 2010. China will have over 600 million.

In South Korea, the world's broadband wonderland, 71 per cent of the people already own mobile phones "" 35 million in a population of 48 million. Hong Kong has a 105 per cent mobile penetration rate, Singapore 90 and Taiwan 169 per cent.

One in every two Malaysians has a cell phone. The Philippines' 36 per cent mobile penetration stands out against a miserable 4 per cent for fixed lines. Even Indonesia has 25 million cell subscribers against 8.5 million fixed lines.

Market reports say there are 1.5 billion mobile subscribers in the world today and some 520 million mobile phones were sold last year. Three years from now, Asia alone will have 800 million cell phones in use.

Should we celebrate this irrepressible spread of the cell phone or sit down to ponder its consequences? Accoustic neuroma, a benign tumour on the auditory nerve that might develop from years of cell phone use, should be the least of our worries.

When Mohammad Yunus introduced Grameen Phone in Bangladesh in March 1997, or China first showed interest in the idea, cell phones had a different purpose. It was considered a development tool supposed to build easy communication bridges across remote communities and provide them with links to markets, products and services.

The cell phone still fulfils that function but, down the road, its role has undergone a dramatic change. It has become a fashion statement, a lifestyle enhancer, an identity as hip as smoking a cigarette and drinking beer or whisky, and young, affluent and upwardly mobile Asians are falling for it like crazy.

Not to be seen with one, talking into it while crossing the street or putting it down on the table as you take your sit, or cuddling it as you would cuddle a pet, is not being quite modern or socially eligible.

And what do people do with their cell phones other than showing them off to friends, downloading ring tones, or demonstrating the dexterity of their thumbs?

Since making a voice call is often more expensive than texting, they send and receive text messages using the short messaging service (SMS) that cell companies offer as a standard practice.

It's like a new frontier of freedom and people are exploring it like mad. Last year, mobile phone owners in China were said to have sent more than 220 billion text messages, more than half of all messages sent in the world.

People use the SMS to make appointments, leave instructions or exchange greetings. But that's only part of it. These days they also get news, stock quotes or movie timings on the cell phones. But more often than not, they simply exchange jokes, photos, random thoughts, spur-of-the-moment comments or even insults and obscenities.

One publisher in China is sending an entire novel through SMS to subscribers "" two daily installments of 70 characters each.

All in all, it means we have here a culture that by its very nature lacks depth and seriousness. Young people being the predominant patrons of mobile phones and, as research shows, almost 95 per cent of them preferring SMS to any other means of communication, we run the risk of an entire generation growing up on junk habits, junk information and junk thinking.

Wait till spam and pornography become a greater threat and mobile phones become a game machine. One report says the wireless gaming market in Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, is expected to expand from $ 237.4 million last year to $ 1.3 billion in 2008, taking yet another step towards turning our youth into intellectual zombies and concluding a process that the TV has already set in motion.

Besides, the cell phone has evolved as the ultimate personal accessory, as intimate as a man's diary or a lady's handbag. Unless one snoops, there's no way of knowing if husbands are cheating on their wives or wives on their husbands.

In fact, mobile cheating is the subject of a recent Chinese movie, called Cell Phone, and Chinese spouses are now said to be asserting their rights to check each other's call records and messages. In many cases, this has even led people to actually end their marriages.