[fameintatenly]

I ended my cell phone contract because I wanted to switch to another provider. Then I thought...let's see what it would be like to live without a cellphone for a few days. That was about 6 months ago. It feels great. We have an office phone and a girl here in the morning... so people can call or leave a message... they can always send an email... and I'll get back. Suddenly it's 1995 again. I did the same with the TV (I don't know how much longer I'll hold out there though) and computer in my home (that I definitely don't want.).


The Cell Refuseniks, an Ever-Shrinking Club

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Published: October 22, 2009

Not so long ago, we all lived in a world in which we decided where to meet friends before leaving the house and we hiked to the nearest payphone if we got a flat tire. Then we got cellphones.

Gregory Han, a writer and editor in Los Angeles, says he got rid of his cellphone to save money and now prefers the lifestyle. “It's a luxury not to be reached when I'm out and about,” he says.

Well, not everyone. For a hardy few that choose to ignore cellphones, life is a pocketful of quarters, missed connections and a smug satisfaction of marching to a different ring tone.

For Linda Mboya, 32, who lives in Brooklyn and works on arts and education programs at a nonprofit group, it also involves never letting sleeping dogs lie.

A friend who lives on the top floor of a house in Brooklyn has a perpetually broken apartment buzzer. So Ms. Mboya makes noise to disturb the dogs who live on the first floor, who then bark and announce her arrival to her friend.

“This system works pretty well,” Ms. Mboya said, though the dogs’ owners might disagree.

For many people, cellphones have become indispensable appendages that make calls, deliver e-mail messages, locate restaurants and identify the song on the radio. After 20 years, 85 percent of adult Americans have cellphones, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. According to the Federal Communications Commission, cellphones caught on faster than cable TV and personal computers although, by some accounts, broadband Internet service was adopted faster.

Those who still do not have them, according to Pew, tend to be older or less educated Americans or those unable to afford phones. “These are people who have a bunch of other struggles in their lives and the expense of maintaining technology and mastering it is also pretty significant for them,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project.

But there is also a smaller subset of adults who resist cellphones simply because they do not want them. They resent the way that ring tones, tiny keyboards and screens disrupt face-to-face conversation. They savor their moments alone and prize the fact that no one knows how to reach them.

“It’s a luxury not to be reached when I’m out and about,” said Gregory Han, a 34-year-old writer and editor living in Los Angeles. Life for him is a lot more planned than most, the consequence of not having a cellphone — or even a landline — at home.

When his mother recently went to the hospital, the family’s communication plan went into action: his mother called his sister, who sent him an instant message on his computer, to which he replied with a call using Skype over the Web. When he travels for work, he prepares his boss with a list of ways to reach him and colleagues to call if he is unreachable, a modern-day version of Tony Roberts’s neurotic character giving minute-by-minute updates of where he would be reachable in the pre-BlackBerry era of Woody Allen’s “Play It Again, Sam.”

Far from being technology-resistant, Mr. Han makes a living blogging about interior design and tech gadgets. He initially got rid of his cellphone to save money, but “I feel I benefit by living in the moment and not having a ring or a buzz or an inclination to always look at the screen.”

These cellphone “refuseniks” probably account for less than 5 percent of those who do not have cellphones, said John Horrigan, consumer research director at the National Broadband Task Force. Though many cellphone owners express growing displeasure about cellphones’ intrusions into their lives, according to Pew, a tiny and most likely shrinking number actually manage to resist them completely.

“Ambivalent networkers bristle at all their gadget-facilitated connectivity, but don’t give it up,” Mr. Horrigan said. “The cell refuseniks are making a statement that they control their availability.”

The painstaking plans that people without cellphones must make to navigate the world show just how dependent the rest of us have become on our phones.

Ms. Mboya always picks a time and a landmark to meet friends and carries quarters in case she has to use a payphone.

Still, her friends are not used to planning their social lives in advance. A recent brunch date required several three-way planning phone calls among Ms. Mboya and two friends. “I can only do that periodically,” said Sheila Shirazi, one of the friends. “I don’t have the time and energy to coordinate to the extent it takes with somebody who isn’t mobile. It’s just not something I’m used to.”

And even the best-laid plans falter. Jenna Catsos, 22, does not have a cellphone because she thinks the idea of always being reachable is “scary” and prefers to keep in touch with handwritten letters. While at college in rural Vermont, Ms. Catsos decided to drive to Massachusetts to surprise her father for his birthday. Halfway there, her car’s transmission broke down. She walked half a mile to the nearest gas station and called her parents from the payphone, but because they were not expecting her, they were not home. After leaving a message with the payphone number, she stood in the gas station parking lot for an hour waiting for them to call back.

“It’s situations like that when I would really love to have a phone,” she said. That might happen sooner than she would like, because she will start looking for a new job this winter and stay on friends’ couches for a few weeks, without her own landline. “It’s really getting impossible not to have one.”

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[alicewong]

i have NEVER owned a cell phone,
and get along just fine without one!

[quorceopporce]

I have a cell phone (and have no intention to rid myself of it), but I do my best to use it as little as possible, lest I become like some of my close friends who do nothing but text and hit up Facebook.

It'd be fine if they did it here or there, but they're complete addicts and they live half their waking lives staring at a two-inch screen. I can only imagine the wonderful things in life they're missing just because they're not paying any attention to their surroundings.

[Klissineopar]

Never owned a cell phone either - and I'm fine.

[StoyaFanst]

I have a cell phone, but since the late 90's it has doubled as my home phone.

It's a luxury not to be reached when I'm out and about... Here's one simple answer to that: leave it at home when you're out and about. You don't have to take it everywhere. Or at the very least: use the OFF button.

[Blotassefesek]

There are ways to mute and turn the vibrate off. You will be able to see if anyone called when you want to, not when they want you to.

Thing is, it is handy. It all depends on who calls you and for what. Knowing if my wife will be late is handy, but I do not call her 10 times a day asking what's up.

It is really funny, growing up in Pay Phone days, cell's are really handy. I still remember doing the Collect "pick up" call for my mother using a pay phone. Calling up and her refusing to accept charges, but still getting the message across that I needed to be picked up from school....

[dolaBeetCeage]

Advances in communications technology have been a trade-off between convenience and loss of solitude.

At one time, you could get away from it by just going to the countryside, before rural areas were connected. Until answering machines and voicemail, you could have at least avoided calls. Now it's all in your pocket.

But you can control it. Put it on silent, have everything go to VM. Answer only the calls you want. It's ridiculous to see people surf-the-net on a cell, but there are many APPS that are useful to people on the go.

I remember when beepers first became popular; because of the nature of my job at the time, my company forced me to carry one. I resisted at first, mainly because it put me under the control of a center in Atlanta (of all places), people who I considered poorly trained and liable to panic in an emergency situation.

As it turned out, the people I dealt with knew they were in a vulnerable position, and relied on me to keep them out of trouble. In return, they cut me a lot of slack when I got beeped while traveling between buildings, and was running a personal errand. A cell phone would have made things even easier.

As for people who spend most of their time thumbing through pages: It will be interesting to see how people born after this technology explosion grow up with it. I grew up after TV, and there were dire predictions of how we would all become TV addicts.

The only reason I can see not to have at least basic cell-service is economic.


Anyway, their new commercial makes me want to switch to T-Mobile. Not a comment on the technology, but the commercial itself. Marketing genius.

[wiweimeli]

The work what Fabrizio has done is really good for the health. I have also planned to do the same thing or to practice the same thank you very much for the replay.

.................................................. .........
Spy Cell Phone

[DebtDetox]

I lived fairly happily without a cell phone until 2006. I am sure I could return to cell-phone-less life, but now I use it when and how I wish. Right now it is in my office and often stays there for weeks on end, turned off.

I know some people are now expected to have them for their work, and I am fine with that, but I don't see why one should feel utterly entrapped to any technology (although electricity would be tough for give up at this point in time, admittedly) if a professional obligation isn't involved.

On the other hand, I asked myself a few years ago, why shouldn't I use this handy bit of electronics if it improves the quality of my life? In February, 2005 I found myself stranded in an airport in a situation which could have been resolved in minutes with a call from a cell phone. Instead it took me all evening to unravel my problem.

In summer, 2008, traveling without a phone (I never carry one when I travel, but why?), I had to walk the length and breadth of St. Pancras Station in London in order to find the one public pay phone (as far as I could discover) in order to contact a friend and say I would be arriving late. Again, why not just carry the silly phone? Also, women tell me they carry them in order to call for a ride from a safe and reliable taxi company. No need to suffer, if we can avoid it. No need to be enslaved either. Just use the technology sensibly.

[aAaBecker]

Few things are more frustrating to me than when I am having a face to face conversation with someone and they stop to answer the cell phone.
A quick glance to see who it is, is ok. Beyond that, It had better be a G.D. emergency.

[Frodogzzz]

^ Amen.

And I hate how while I may find it obnoxious, expressing my displeasure to someone like that accomplishes absolutely nothing since to NOT address their phone would in their minds be insane.