Convergence and Mobile Phones

Mobile phones are the cheapest devices available where all the technologies converge. You can use your mobile for communication purposes, watch the television through your mobile, listen to your favourite FM radio station, browse the Net, send and receive mails, take photographs or video and send them instantly to your friends.

The latest mobile phone introduced by the mobile giant Nokia, the latest in the N series, the N 95 has all these facilities. It even comes with a 5 mega pixel camera with a Carl Zesis lens. Other leading brands like Sony Ericson, Motorola and Samsung too have models which supports such features. These mobiles with the latest technology are at large used by the student fraternity. Hashmi.T.Ibrahim, a student of Mass Communication, is a proud owner of a Nokia N70. He says that the phone is an add-on to his overall personality. “Being a Mass Communication student, the phone was very useful for me. I have shot pictures and even video to support the news items posted on my blog”. He also adds that the phone is a source if entertainment as it functions as an FM Radio and an MP3 player as well. He is eagerly waiting to subscribe to the mobile TV.

Revathy, a researcher in Statistics who also uses a multimedia supported handset says that the mobile has been a boon to her in her research. She uses her phone to get connected to the Net and also sends and replies to emails using her mobile phone. “In the beginning, when I first bought the mobile, it was purely an ornament. But now it is a necessity”. But Soumya, a first year student in Mass Communication thinks different. She hails from Cannanore district in Kerala and thinks that a mobile is just a communication device. “I just think that it is a device to communicate with my dear and near ones. Hence my mobile is very dear to me”. Same is the line of thought with her friends Vandana, Rajitha and Suchitha. But they all join together at the point that their mobile phone is a necessary evil.

The evil side crops up now. A lot of cases are coming up in this regard. Picturing girls and ladies without permission, using the captured images for obscenity. File transfer is easy with the latest Bluetooth technology and even with the help of infrared. A girl student says that she was the victim of such an event and from that day she is quite afraid to walk in public. “You don’t know whether they are focussing the camera at you or not “. The health hazards because of the prolonged use of mobile phone is hurting Surjith, a post-graduate in Sociology. “How it affects our body, we can only know in the long run. I am a bit concerned about that”. His Sociology background also makes him think about the changes in behaviour of youngsters. “Now it’s all communication through missed calls and messages. That is a bad trend. In this century people seldom talk and this has aggravated the condition again”.

Technology is fast advancing. Tomorrow a new technology will come and that becomes the trend of tomorrow. In this century of “convergence”, the World itself will converge into your mobile phone. That day is not far away. How will humans behave at that time? Let us wait and see…..

By

Sabarinath Bahuleyan.
sabarinathbahuleyan@gmail.com