How Have Cell Phones Changed Society Positively

Mobile phones connect people in dire need with services that can change their lives, Amy Gahran says.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Cell phones can be annoying, but they provide vital services and man connections
Cell phones also are making and shaping news, peculiarly on the local level
Despite the hype surrounding them, near Americans all the same do not accept smartphones

Editor's note: Amy Gahran writes about mobile tech for CNN.com. She is a San Francisco Bay Area writer and media consultant whose blog, Contentious.com, explores how people communicate in the online age.

(CNN) -- My "aha!" moment nearly the significance of cell phones happened in spring 2009 when I first moved to Oakland, California.

I was riding the bus. Sitting across from me was an elderly admirer who looked homeless. A cell phone rang, and he reached into the pocket of his frayed jacket and pulled out a pocket-size flip phone.

"Howdy? ...Yes, that'south me. Thanks for calling me back," he began, apologizing for the noise of the double-decker. "Right. Yes, I just wanted to make certain my appointment was confirmed in your system. I did get that text bulletin yesterday and I replied, but I just wanted to double-check that you got that and I fabricated information technology onto your schedule. OK, adept, expert. Yes, I'll be there tomorrow. Considering I'm actually serious about getting off the streets this time."

While I was eavesdropping on this conversation, I had my iPhone out and I was checking Twitter. This may sound frivolous -- just on my screen at the very moment were ii notable tweets: an announcement of a significant development on an energy policy topic of involvement to me (but that receives scant media coverage) and an update from a friend I hadn't seen in years proverb that her third chemo handling for breast cancer had gone easier than the first two.

In seconds, I'd retweeted the policy update publicly to share it with my more than than v,000 Twitter followers; so I privately directly-messaged a note of support to my friend.

So I put abroad my iPhone and paused to consider the guy on the motorbus. I didn't talk to him; I just took in his tattered clothes, the blimp-to-bursting gym handbag on his lap, his securely lined and tired face up.

This is how jail cell phones have changed our lives.

Yep, cell phones can be distracting, annoying, trivial and frustrating. Yes, they generally offer poorer quality, less reliable voice call connections compared to land lines. Yes, they can be an attending-arresting cloak that people hide behind to isolate themselves from the people effectually them. ("Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone," advises Tanya Davis in her poignant video poem How to Be Alone.)

Simply cell phones also now provide vital services and human connections. They connect people in dire need with services that can modify (or relieve) their lives and offer new hope, fifty-fifty through simple broadcast text letters. In the same month as my eye-opening bus ride, a Washington Post story explained how inexpensive cell phones accept become a lifeline for D.C.-area homeless people.

Video: Which smartphone works for you?

Cell phones permit us to quickly share important news that often doesn't make it into the daily newspaper or evening newscast. This is condign even more truthful as so many established news brands are slowly imploding (mainly due to bad management decisions over the last 15 years -- not, equally often is claimed, due to the appearance of the internet and cell phones).

Prison cell phones let us to extend the presence of net-enabled communications into the spare moments of our lives, wherever we are, then we tin can reach out to our friends when we're on the bus or in line at the bank.

Prison cell phones also are making and shaping news, specially on the local level, where news coverage has been waning.

Several video-enabled cell phones were on the scene at the Jan i, 2009, killing of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African-American resident of Oakland, California, who was returning with friends from New year's day'due south Eve celebrations in San Francisco. Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle had Grant face-down on the cement station platform when he fatally shot Grant. Nearby, on an idling BART railroad train, many bystanders watched. Several videoed the incident with their phones.

Some videos of this shooting were uploaded to YouTube within hours, sparking instant fury through a metropolis where race-charged police violence has long been a flash bespeak. The cell telephone videos were too key pieces of evidence during Mehserle's trial. (On July eight he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and awaits sentencing.)

Looking back on the significance of cell phones in the Grant shooting, I reminded participants in final weekend's video workshop at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference that journalists demand these skills, too. Whatever media skills and tools people in your community are using, journalists should be prepared to monitor and use those channels as well. Unfortunately, right at present well-nigh journalists lack these skills -- simply more are communicable up.

The prominent role of jail cell telephone media in the news of the Grant shooting also provided the inspiration for the community news and views site that Susan Mernit founded in 2009, Oakland Local. I co-founded this site, and am working to brand Oakland Local more than easily accessible via the inexpensive "feature phones" usually relied upon by the bulk of Oaklanders.

Yes, smartphones do matter. I ain a smartphone, and I use it nearly constantly. (Over the summer I ditched my iPhone in favor of the Droid Incredible.) Still, smartphones are not the biggest piece of the mobile mural. You may non be able to tell this from tech news coverage, but most Americans withal don't have smartphones.

Cell phones have become about ubiquitous in the Us, only judging by the kinds of phones almost Americans utilize, smartphones are too pricey or complex for the majority of usa. Although cheaper Android phones that bridge the gap between feature phones and smartphones are starting to hitting the U.S. marketplace, there will probably always be a noticeable mobile digital divide. Many people on both sides of that split up are learning how to make the most out of the phones they accept.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/10/22/gahran.mobile.phone.lives/index.html

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