The Mobile: So Finns Can Talk (Mobile phone safety)

Member Name: "420565

Product:	Mobile phone safety
Date:	05/02/03 (290 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Let there be speech!

Disadvantages: Watch the road, you sodding git!

I'm reasonably certain that the many drawbacks to the increasing prevalence of mobile phone dependency are to some degree valid in one way or another. In fact, I know they are, based on numerous personal experiences. For example, you really can't concentrate on the road and break up with your long-distance girlfriend at the same time, unless you want to tempt fate. And you can't send a well-formulated SMS text message on a bus without missing your stop by a good few hours or so. But risks in general are inherent in the development of new technology. Every bit of social progress presents us with a new set of obstacles, and in turn, though often a slow and tortuous process, mankind takes the necessary measures and overcomes them with a staggering level of success. The viscious (sp?) cycle of evolution. Back to the topic of mobile phones. I've evaluated the risks juxtaposed with the advantages, and decided hands-down that the former are indeed outweighed to a great extent by the latter.

In case you haven't noticed, I live in Helsinki, Finland. (I'm still awfully entertained and a bit bewildered by that fact, though it's been a few months.) The Finns are notorious for being a rather reserved people. Save for the exception of the Midsummer Festival, it is a remarkable sight to see a Finn behaving in a manner short of unassuming, even taciturn. Be it on account of the mindwarping language and the utter lack of conversation opportunities in a land whose claim to fame is the sauna and an eerily large pan flute thing (look up Sibelius Park), it is no exaggeration to say that the Finns never speak. This presents an insurmountable sum of problems in every aspect of life from relationships to business transactions to ordering a burger from the McDonald's drive through. But thanks to the advent of the mobile phone (Finland is the home of Nokia, and neighbouring Sweden boasts Ericsson, as well as a startlingly disgusting tinn

ed herring called "surströmming", but that's off topic), the Finnish people on a whole have broken the communication barrier, in that they can finally communicate at all!!

Regardless of a vastly increased likelihood of losing control of your car and wrapping yourself horrifically around a pole, or in more mild cases, incurring a rather hefty fine from the long arm of the law, the grand advantage of an entire nation newly endowed with the gift of speech is far greater than any harm that could come of it. Unless Paavo Lipponen (Finland's prime minister) lets this revalation get to his head and gives the OK to instigate a nuclear war against North Korea with the aid of his Nokia mobile, the future of Scandinavia looks a lot brighter. To complain about its potential dangers, substantiated or not, is like complaining about the wheel. No doubt that many an ill-fated Dutchman has died at the hands of a runaway wheel of gouda, and no doubt that thousands of deaths result from the automobile (an invention made possible by the wheel, thank you), but just imagine the world without it. Wait a minute. Don't, or else someone somewhere will lobby for the eradication of mankind's most integral invention. Life without the wheel. God, it's worse than life without zinc or the cubic zirconia. Just kill me now, please! I don't want to think about it, but I just can't help it!!!

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