Comms - Keep it Simple.

I was watching an episode of Star Trek (the original TV series) and got to thinking about the communication devices that the crew had. These were the equivalent of our modern day mobile telephones (cell phones, if you are translating this into American) and  depicted in the series long before society had ‘mobiles.’ But it was interesting that these devices, 'Communicators', only had a single function - communication. The creators knew that it was sensible to stick with that one function.

Hence you don’t see Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Chekov, Uhura or any of the other crew members wandering around constantly looking at their communicators to check for information, stopping to take selfies on the bridge or absentmindedly almost walking into things, or other crew members, whilst they update their status. So these guys were way ahead of their time, creating a communication device that did only that - no photography, banking, bookings, social media, emails... no, just communication. They could not have navigated the many ‘universes’ out there or sought out ‘brave new worlds’ had they been constantly fixated on their communicators, seeking attention for their status. The only status on the Enterprise was the 'status report' often requested by Captain Kirk from Mr Spock.

But in today's self-obsessed world the mobile and the individual's status, or even the status of others, is a fixation. Witness the immediacy with which people grab their mobile phones after an aircraft taxis to a halt just so they can check what they've missed for the past two hours! You might say it's harmless but only yesterday I saw a guy walk out in front of my car just because his attention was entirely on his phone, instead of the potential hazards involved in crossing the road. As I braked sharply to a halt to avoid hitting him I thought of the wisdom of Star Trek's communicator device creators. 

N.B. In not hitting the distracted pedestrian I realise that I deprived him of a selfie moment and a potential FaceBook status update opportunity whilst lying in the road: “Got run over today, lol.”