The Effect of Telecommunications Technology on our Work and Play

Cell phones have changed the atmosphere of our workplaces, making them more escapable physically, yet at the same time making them less escapable mentally. Enhanced with other phone services such as caller ID, call forwarding, and answering machines they have created whole new sets of contacting games between employee's and their co-workers. They have made our roads more dangerous, yet having them in our cars has made it easier to call a tow truck when you're stranded, or to call a radio station to report gridlock. The same person that uses their phone in line at the store to get the advantage over the unreachable employee to gain status at the office, also loses status in the community due to the snickering behind them in line. The recent telecommunications improvements provide an opportunity for the appealing psuedo-self-employed aspects of telecommuting. For parents, cell phones have eliminated the excuses of the late night returning child when asked 'Why didn't you call?" Cell phones have obviously intruded into our lives in more ways than we even realize at first glimpse, while making a great deal of things we do much easier. In this paper I will attempt to expand on how these changing relationships effect our always stressed out society.

Wireless Communications is in the grand scheme of technological development, a rather recent event. But the quickness to which the market of cellular phones has expanded shows that some people have definitely embraced it as a positive. The graph on the following page shows the rapidity of America's love affair with the cell phone.

Radio Telephone technology started in 1977 when Motorola, American Radio Telephone, and AT&T were licensed by the FCC to develop a high capacity radio telephone system for shortwave radio bands. In 1978 AT&T began the first radio telephone system test operations in Chicago. The Japenese inaugurated the first commercial cellular telephone system in Tokyo in 1979. In the United States, the Federal Communications commission authorized commercial cell phones in 1982 and the first system was set up by Ameritech in Chicago the following year. AT&T and Motorola followed in 1984 with their own systems in New York and Washington D.C.. The amount of customers and potential customers rapidly expanded and by 1990 there were systems in place, or close to being completed in every market in the United States. As the graph shows the early 1990's gave way to an exponential growth in ownership of cell phones especially as the new digital lighter weight phones became available in 1992.