I was struck by the primal force of my craving for a cell phone. Obviously, others must have felt this, too, since there are now an estimated 100 million people worldwide running around and talking into the air, with only a small black object nestling against one ear to distinguish them from the deinstitutionalized psychotics. It had become impossible to go anywhere—out on the street, to a shopping mall, or to an airport—without noticing that every other person in earshot was engaged in a vast and urgent ongoing conversation which excluded only myself.
For a stylish explanation of primal urges and even ordinary whims, we turn to evolutionary psychology, which claims that we do what we do because our apelike ancestors once did the same thing. It doesn’t matter that our ape-like ancestors did not possess cell phones; they no doubt had cell-phone-related urges. Like most of our primate cousins, humans are social animals. Paleo-anthropologists think we got this way when we left the safety of the forests for the wide open savanna, where we had to band together for defense against a slew of nasty predators. Hence, we are hardwired for wireless telecommunications, or at least for the need to be verbally connected to others of our kind—in case a leopard is lurking nearby. The explosion of cell phone use is simply a reflection of the genetically scripted human inclination to huddle in groups.
There is another interpretation of the evolutionary psychology of cell phones, according to which the cell phone users are seeking not fellowship but isolation from the hordes of fellow humans around them. To a non-cell-phone user, the cell phoners marching through supermarkets and malls project an aura of total inaccessibility. Maybe they are really having meaningful and satisfying conversations. And maybe they are simply trying to repel the advances of any phone-less fellow humans who happen to be physically present.
In their 1992 book, The Social Cage: Human Nature and the Evolution o f Society (Stanford University Press), Alexandra Maryanski and Jonathan H. Turner argue that for eons before our ancestors were forced to band together in the savanna, they lived contented solitary lives in the trees, much like orangutans today. Our arboreal ancestors were probably pleased to run into others of their own kind only at mating time; otherwise, they regarded each other as competitors for the nicest berries and comfiest nesting spots. If these orangutan-type pre-humans had cell phones, they would have used them to signal each other: “Bug off. Can’t you see I have an important call right now?”
Yet another evolutionary-psychological factor probably contributed to cell phone mania. Since the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, and possibly well before then, humans have lived in hierarchical societies where we have been eager to signal our status with accessories such as feather-tufted spears and shrunken-head pendants.
Cell phones serve much the same function, and will continue to do so until they become as common as Walkmen. Thus, the point is not to communicate with distant kin and colleagues, but with all the anonymous others who are around at the moment.
If you doubt this, consider when you last heard someone say into a cell phone: “Yes, I am a worthless turd, and if I screw up again, please hasten to fire me.” What the person is saying, instead, is invariably, “God damn it, Craig, I told you we need that order by Thursday and no later,” or something very similar. It was the opportunity to speak commandingly in public places that tempted me, for several years, to find a fake cell phone designed for playpen use so that I, too, could stride along the sidewalk barking at imaginary brokers and underlings.
As soon as I got my own cell phone, I was disappointed to find that, although we may have evolved to be psychologically cell-phone-dependent, our anatomy is still stuck in the era when technology consisted of a sharpened stone.
For one thing, our fingertips are too fat for the keypad, so that it takes several tries to dial even “911” with any degree of accuracy.
Then there’s the tiny size of the phones themselves—more appropriate to a lemur or some other remote primate ancestor than to full-grown Homo sapiens. My own phone’s total length is about four-and-a-half inches, so that if I wish to speak and listen at the same time, I have to reduce the distance between mouth and ear by screwing my mouth way over into my right cheek, as if suffering an attack of extreme insecurity. The only hope is that the process of natural selection will soon lead to humans with antenna-like fingers and mouths situated at temple level.
Another problem is that my relationships with other humans have not yet evolved to the point that would be truly helpful in the cell phone era. I have the usual quota of friends, relatives, and so-called business associates, but none of them is so underemployed that I can call and ask: “Hey there, you got a few minutes to walk me over to the bank so that I don’t look like I, uh, don’t have anyone to talk to?” Sometimes there is no alternative but to dial up 1-900-WEATHER and pretend to converse with it, and I suspect that many other cell phone users are doing the same.
So here’s what I conclude about the evolutionary psychology of cell phones: We are social animals, no question about it, better suited to traveling in convivial bands, hooting and chattering, than to wandering alone in crowds. But few such convivial bands exist within our famously atomized and individualistic capitalist society, where most human relationships now take the sinister form of “deals.” So we have regressed to a modified orangutan state: Despairing of true sociality, we settle for faking it. The satisfaction, such as it is, lies in making our equally lonely fellow humans feel jealous.
I do have one new friend, though. Everywhere I go now, it comes along, tucked neatly in my pocket or purse. At night I plug it into the wall to recharge, and hear its happy little beep as the nurturing current flows in. Sometimes I take it out during the day, play with its keypad, and confide into its mouthpiece for a moment. Pathetic? Perhaps, but it’s not easy striding out into that savanna alone.