Podcast: Play in new window
Walked around the mall today, stopped by the Sprint store to check out the crowd, expertly playing with smartphones. Sauntered over to the Verizon booth, two guys, talking, laughing, no customers in sight. The T-Mobile store was quiet like a funeral home. No perfect mobile device there.
Most mobolites–that’s what I call “mobile users”–a term as exciting as moth balls in closets– talked, texted, surfed, photoed, mp3′d, geo-located’ed. Unknown to them, I, watching each finger on touch screens, my ears zooming in on phone conversations.
Continued my journey, like a wolf stalking a nice, juicy lamb. My beady eyes rolling around 180 degrees, leering at all the mobolites playing with their mobiles. As I canvassed the crowd, I kept asking myself: “Is there a perfect mobile device, a phone, pad, PDA, walking radio, anything that people would die for? If I pulled out a $500 bill, sprinted to the nearest mobolite, would it sell me the perfect mobile device?”
I know what you’re thinking. I’m a mobile voyeur on a Sunday afternoon ogling mobile phones and their owners. And you’re right. I’m a mobile blogger lusting, lurking at the food court, RF-tuned to sleek new wireless gadgets, the mobolites unaware of my presence, as they slurp slurpees, dangle french fries without ketchup, little children’s eyes wide like Christmas morn.
Walking past an appliance store, I stop, sniff the air, focus on fridge through window, imagining a wireless refrigerator, equipped with Dolby quad sound, an LCD panel for home messaging, alarm in place when bacon rots. Maybe the perfect mobile device.
But my journey isn’t over, stopping by the water cooler, lapping up aqua, licking my lips when…
A bookstore, across the way, catches my eyes at 20 degrees. A book called “iSteve: The Book of Jobs,” nestled in a basket of apples, shiny like an iPhone’s metallic antenna. Looking 90 degrees left, then right, I slither to the window, eyes on the book with a 1970′s pic of the guy who made the perfect mobile device. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s a fake, someone impersonated him at product roll-out events, a guy programmed to thunder “astounding,” “incredible,” “awesome.” Skip the book. I move on.
Bright lights from the ceiling blind me, the Mobolites moving, pushing against me, taking me to somewhere, don’t know. Crowd thronging through new store, doors wide open, Mobolites 12 across. Into store, no control, heading for perfect mobile device.. Not sure where… but soon.
Thrusting forward to store corner, my eyes no longer blinded. Standing with the Mobolites, gazing at the ultimate new device. Can’t believe. but like a monolith, it’s there….a……ah….a Japanese talking, Internet-connected talking toilet. It is…Surely must be….undeniably true…the perfect mobile device.
About Brian Prows