Impact

These new mobile technologies have had a massive impact on our society. In schools, you can see droves of students chatting on Facebook, surfing the internet, or sending e-mails. The Blackberry, one of the first mobile platforms to integrate the internet and other forms of wireless communication, was once ubiquitous in the business world, but is now ubiquitous almost everywhere. Thanks to the keyboards of these mobile platforms we have a whole new language: chat-speak (LOL! OMG SO COOL! 1337-SPK FTW!).

The commonplaceness (is that a word?) of these devices has raised interesting social and ethical issues. Not a day goes by where some pillock in the bank lineup doesn't chat endlessly on his cellphone with no consideration for the people around him. Whole new classes of etiquette have been created expressly for the interaction of people while using a cellphone. In addition to etiquette, laws have had to be written to define how governments and corporations can treat mobile technologies. For example, as digital mobile telephony came into common use, the FBI started tapping cellphones without using warrants. It took a Supreme Court case for the government to tell the FBI that they could not do this, as cellphones were the same as landline phones.