The cell phone revolution

It has been so since earliest man learned to make fire, which, under the right conditions, was great for cooking food and keeping warm, but which also could destroy an entire village. Cell phones may not kill people outright — although one should be careful while pumping gas — but they have done more to change everyday life than perhaps any recent invention other than the computer.

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the first cell phone, a brick-size monstrosity unveiled at a Soldier Field press event in Chicago, at which a call was made to Alexander Graham Bell's great-grandson in Germany. From that expensive beginning (the first phones cost almost $4,000, not including monthly fees and a fee for each call) came an America today in which 262.7 million of the devices are in use, a number not too far off the nation's population. Many millions more are in use around the world.

The cell phone is a textbook example of the power of the free market, something worth remembering at a time when some mistakenly think the free market has failed. Institutions lack the creativity necessary to find new uses for products — uses that can create entirely new wealth-generating markets. But the combined efforts of individuals vying to make money can be creative beyond expectations.

In 1983, people were intrigued with the idea of walking down the street, cellular brick in hand, talking to any other phone in the world. That was a novelty, but it quickly grew stale. Few people then could have imagined small cell phones that both capture and send photos and videos, that connect seamlessly to a worldwide fount of knowledge known as the Internet, or that allow users to watch television or listen to music in stereo. They didn't consider the advantages of contacting people, especially children, at any time or place, through voice or text. They hadn't considered how crimes could be solved by people using phones as video cameras.

And, as the market also does so well, the world got all of that at a fraction of the cost of that original phone, with a small monthly fee that includes minutes.

Of course, the world also got loud-mouthed bores who make calls at restaurants and on public transit. It got strange ring-tones that go off at church, during concerts or funerals. It got mobs of teenagers, yet unborn in 1983, who wear their thumbs out with incessant text messaging. It got jarring new crimes, such as young people taking and sending pictures of one another in the nude, or of perverts photographing unwitting subjects in locker rooms or public restrooms. It got people walking the streets with tiny devices in their ears, speaking loudly as though mentally ill.

Good and bad, like most other technologies. But mostly good, and certain to provide more surprises in the future.

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