Global tyranny of mobile phones

BY ANDREW Anthony

THERE is now a device that is able to monitor the intensity of dialogue and quantify your participation on a scale of one to 100.

The global tyranny of the mobile-phone network has for some time meant that there is no hiding place for the uncommunicative male. Nowadays not even the lonely wilderness of the Gobi desert is a safe haven from those terrifying twin inquiries: "Where are you and what are you doing?"

In an age when turning your phone off is tantamount to a confession of adultery, the only sane response is to mumble something vague about "work" and then quickly ask after the well-being of your interrogator.

At this point, one is normally able to zone out, daydreaming of the Mongolian wastelands, with just the occasional "uh-huh," "yeah" and "what's that?" to keep the conversation going.

But not anymore. A device named Jerk-O-Meter has been designed by Anmol Madan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Apparently it is able to monitor the intensity of dialogue and quantify your participation on a scale of one to 100.

Then, if you fall short of the necessary level of conversational commitment, it sends a note to your phone-mate along the lines of "This person is acting like a jerk. Do you want to hang up?"

Mr. Madan says his software will "make people more attentive." No doubt it will, in the way the threat of a cattle prod in the stomach can also focus the mind. But is it not also an attack on one of our most fundamental civil liberties: the right to be utterly distracted while "talking" to your spouse on the phone?

Often when survivors of long marriages are interviewed, they say that the key to a lengthy union is the ability to listen.

Sound advice, but in the digital age it needs to be amended to the ability to act as if you are listening, when in fact you are staring out of the window wondering if you remembered to record the cricket.

The Jerk-O-Meter is an intrusion into our last bastion of silence, that sacred space wherein we can retreat when cellular voices fill our heads with news of travel locations - "I'm on the train" - and fashion purchases - "I'm not sure you'll like it" - and other such vital details from elsewhere.

Forget identity cards and police powers: a far more sinister threat to human rights has just come out of MIT. Even a jerk can see that.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005.