Hanging On The Telephone

When I was just an earnest young hobbledehoy with time aplenty on my hands, I used to wonder what great generational watersheds technology might spring on us in my life. What strange artifact would I be able to point at in ten or twenty years' time, and say to bored kids, "We never had that when I was your age! We used to make do with tying an aubergine to the dog, and using that instead." (No matter what object you're pointing at, you can pretty much claim that in your day, an aubergine tied to a dog was an acceptable substitute. They don't know any different, and chances are, they're not fucking listening to you anyway.)

With the exception of the internet, mobile phones have probably been the biggest how-in-blue-buggery-did-we-cope-without-that? technology to descend on us in the last generation. I never had one until adulthood, but within a year or two, I couldn't live without it. Thinking back to a time when they weren't ubiquitous is like trying to remember the Stone Age. Just think! We used to have to meticulously organise nights out, establish meeting places, and locate the nearest phone box in emergencies! It's a wonder they didn't make us learn smoke signals in schools to boot.

But a lesser-known havoc wreaked by mobile phones was on horror and thriller writers. Fictional survival situations now, without exception, require a satisfactory explanation early in proceedings as to why the hero doesn't just whip out his mobile and rattle off a quick text to say BEIN HUNTED BY UNDEAD ALIEN CANNIBALS. BIT OF HELP WUD BE NICE. TA xxx. And as there's only so many possible explanations you can give, it usually ends up being either "broken phone" (the hero is clever enough to evade death, but the kind of pillock who drops his phone down the bog), "empty battery" (the hero is clever enough to evade death, but the kind of pillock who forgets what his charger's for), or "no signal" (the hero is clever enough to evade death, but spends all of his time running around with his phone up in the air, shouting "for fuck's sake, if I get through this, I'm ditching Vodafone").

This is what today's children will miss out on. Global communications have made the world a smaller and arguably safer place, and as their power and networks grow, so every mountain, jungle, eerie cabin or haunted house becomes just a phone call from safety. Plausible survival films are, sadly, a thing of the past.

So in a few years, when they do a remake of Deliverance or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that's only ten minutes long - because the characters use their super duper smart-phones to ring for help as soon as they realise the kind of trouble they're in - you can tell some wide-eyed young whippersnapper watching it: "When I was your age, they wouldn't have been able to escape this kind of situation with a mobile phone. Nope. In my day, they'd have had to use an aubergine tied to a dog."