A phone tells a life

If you are about my age, you should pause with me to wonder:
What a life we’ve been through!

I still remember when I was a kid in Macau, our shop shared a phone with the neighbouring shop. The phone was put on a swivel in a hole in the wall between the two shops.

I remember also we had to go out to the Cable & Wireless booth in the central post office to make international calls.

And when I left home for the USA for the first time, my family devised an ingenious scheme. It would let my folks know I safely arrived without having to pay the expensive fee. I would call person-to-person asking for a particular name. My family would say no such person. Then my call would not be charged and the “I-arrived” message was passed!

Fast forward.

First, mobile phone appeared like a carry-on by your chauffeur to plug into your car so you could talk whist being driven.

Then, the Big Brother (大哥大) cell phone which could stand on tea house tables for show-off. It doubled up as a weapon if things didn’t go well.

Finally, now we all hold a cell phone in our palm, some one each, which allows you to talk or video conference with siblings and friends in America, Canada, Hong Kong and wherever.
No fee!

It’s been indeed a long huge leap, all in our one lifetime!
I always imagine a photograph showing an 80 year old talking in a 100 year old HK tram over her cellphone to her grand children in overseas captures perfectly human achievement in our life, through a phone.

Who still remembers the Yellow Pages?!

But the story doesn’t end there.

With that same cell phone you can now answer your Amazon deliverer at the door of your house in San Francisco, tell him to put the package in a safe place, and turn on one light in the foyer at the same time.
While you are in Tokyo.
All on your phone and with your Ring camera doorbell!

You may even then tell Alexa to play your Spotify playlist to your AirPods whilst you go out to pick up your sushi order!

All these are clearly tangible results of human progress.
They too are testament of undeniable human intelligence.
Above all, they speak to how great humans could become.

Indeed for an old person like me, it’s really hard to grasp how far we humans have come along, in mere seventy years.
And, how much more we humans would be able to conquer and achieve, given another 70 years!


"The most beautiful thing that comes from God is the human spirit."
~~ Søren Kierkegaard ~~

"The first sip from the glass of natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting for you."
~~ Werner Heisenberg ~~

"The creation of beauty is the purpose of life. To be a poet is to see God in everything, and to create beauty is to give God praise."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~~

What are mere mortals that you should think about them,
human beings that you should care for them?
~~ Psalm 8:4, King David, New Living Translation of Bible ~~