Welcome to the documentary from the BBC world service, where we report the world, however difficult the issue, however hard to reach It casts from the BBC world service. I supported by advertising, pay and ryan reynolds at mid mobile. We like to do the opposite of what big wireless. Does they charge you a lot? We charge you a little so naturally, when they announced that we raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you that's right, cutting the price of meant unlimited from thirty dollars a month to just fifteen dollars a month, give it a try, mid mobile dot com, slash switch. Innovation and up front payment for three months and required. Taxes in these extra additional restrictions apply seem at levels outcome for full terms, I. in our restless world. The news never stops, there's always something happening somewhere, so catch up with the days most important news stories in the global knees, podcast harmonious broadcast

the BBC world service, the later edition is available now search, wherever you get. Your bbc broadcasts your listening to the documentary from the BBC world, sir. it's a hello moto. we two thousands- I was one of the senior developers who helped create the first iphone with steve jobs at apple. I've got some special iphones up here: special board, an eminent, so I get some digital video out and to unlock the phone. I just take my finger and slide it across the device transformed mobile phone use the world over, but it was a moment five decades ago this year, which actually kicked off the revolution in communication. That would change all our lives. The story of the cell phone or mobile phone, as it's called in many parts of the world and begins

early nineteen, seventeen, nineteen, seventy three to be precise, We stood on sixth avenue around fifty six green and I decided maybe trying to call jointly. That would be dramatic thing to do. Joe was the head of the intuitive for real and amazingly enough. He answered- and I said, hi marty cooper call a cellphone, but a real cell phone and Elk personal, there were some of the original, and to this day I remember that call, I believe, the mandy gregg and this is controlled and connected fifty years of the cell phone now ninety four and living in California. It was a new york that martin to permit the world's first call using

while phone Martin than a young engineer, motorola had been working on technology to develop a phone for some years and the call to his rivals at eighteen. Tea was all part of a cheeky battle to upstage each either in the race to develop a cellular network. which also wonderful day in the sensitive everything worked We were on the edge of our church. Every time we use that phone we'll work. This was founded, have thousands of parts of it we had an engineer handy in case something failed, but we succeeded that day and we succeeded, even when we to washington and tests. well, the city of washington, but as mark recalls, the main focus at the time was on car phones rather than mobile devices. in the late nineteenth cities, the bell system, now, the day had invented a technology.

cellular technology, and that they wanted radio spectrum, so they could commercialized their view of what cellular technology was was car tat. We have ro, just in believing that we believe the time was ready for personal communication. So we took a bell system, even if martin and his team have demonstrated what could be done. Scepticism stood in the way relax with no fears in those days and weeks. Gentlemen came in from Britain said you know You, americans may adopt this category, but we do study, and we think that total market for portable self. loans in london is twelve thousand. So we don't think is a very important technology and Martin, knowledge is the original cellphone. Wasn't that easy to handle either the first cell phone was a little over.

It is high and natural three quarter line three inches deep. We called it the brick it looked like a brick and away. about as much it had a battery life of twenty minutes, but that was the problem because you couldn't hold. For twenty minutes. It was so heavy. The cellphone eventually went commercial, but even then it took years to become really popular did we ever think that there would be a super computer and a camera and the internet in a telephone those things existed at nineteen, seventy three, so we never could have imagined that first funk may have been made and nineteen seventy three fifty years ago, but it wasn't until the nineties that widespread use of the cell phone really took off. I had an uncle who live

The uk this is in the late nineteenth. My family justice in Ghana remembers what life was like before the cell phone. If he wanted to speak with, as we had to go and q and which at the telecom sent out, which was very popular at that time please in Ghana. So when you went to this telecom saying they had about maybe ten different families, all waiting for calls from outside the country in front as you could wait the whole day, because if you missed him, once he would not be able to call again, another person is to be there and then you never get to speak with this place is so much What you used to do was to buy the cosette. it has like a one hour recording he will. For the one and record everything that he wanted to see. Deformity you, How we are doing, he would say, ok, I've seen this money use one city to give to anti alma the last You told me about your daughter: how is she doing so? He,

Wanna and that's what the cheapest and when you finish, did the us to merely by the person who take up a one before you got two ghana that we would now plead now. We would also do see my report and then postal and cosette to use a doll was a very interesting did recently. I had my first robustly. Nineteen. Eighty mobile phones did exist because often the preserve a very rich men and then in suits and shoulder pads, you might see them on an episode of dynasty, her dallas or in the business world. On tv financial news reports huge brick, phones became a status symbol commonly us she added with a so called yuppie. If you go back to some of the big transportable things like this found that I just picked up here I am which is kind of the size of a car battery and would have been level in the kind of meat, nineteen, eighties, technological analysed and founder of the mobile phone museum Ben. Would this big block of a phone which, I can probably here the size of as I put it down on the table. This was

carrying round the kettle bell, but also good you tremendous power so that this phone, which cost thousands and thousands of others I'm too by and only had a talk time of about twenty minutes seems a bit ridiculous. Now, at the time was like a piece of science fiction and it wasn't just wealthy people who abide interestingly, it really enables people to get a competitive edge? So you'd see people like car dealers and build it? them so rather than having to leave a building site, go off, coordinate deliveries and orders stuff. You could do it. The car dealers could go to auctions and they could ring through to the office and say what I can get this car, do you know someone who could buy it and they have a right. Age on their rivals We moved into the pond portable the cycle to break in which people will remember from the wall street film with Michael Douglas talking, agreed is good and all those sorts of things, and it was called a break because Like you are holding a break up to your head, that really was a state assembly sleepy,

going out of Evenings- and they have the phone on the end of the bar- the table in the pop, and it was very much staked a symbol for people who are known as yuppies in that particular area, The mobile phone is one of the fastest, salmon, aided media in history, professor creation and media studies at fordham university in new york. Paul Levinson has been studying cellphones for decades and wrote a book called cellphone the story of the world's most mobile medium, the kinds of mobile phones it you can carry easily in your pocket, a purse they came around in the nineteen nineties and certainly by the mid twenty odds, you had a vast majority pretty soon people in the world having access to phones, in fact, What are the amazing miracles about smartphones is that they tell me the world fund

Do than any other medium of communication, ever was invented so we'll deal here with an incredibly popular medium, everyone. Why don't have one in their pocket or other hand. We been speaking to people out world, and it seems everyone can remember getting their first found. My very first phone was knock here that retain, as in Ghana. I am buying that fall in action, water, a cry and they one night I couldn't sleep. That was in two thousand and five. I was so excited that I have a phone just to make and receive cause at the last stage is not everyone that has a phone at the time, so it meant everything to me and the people around me member. During that time, the talk was way giving out this every night calls. So we spend

time in a night touching bees with phrase families, but this was really for me. A dream come true at a time you could make calls talk to people overseas people anyway, that the anger- and it can also says that service there were so joyful for me and I was so excited to be lucky for you at a time student dmitri in rio. Yours, you like very much my father's phone because it had that little nay game. As a cuban drive it very much and hear Brazil, it's even then they conic for now a days. It's the nokia that we joke about it being indestructible better, so you can slow it for a man hey, you can hear it with anything in it, basically continuous work. So it's very impressive. When I was twelve years old, the first year of junior high school, my father vote my very first mobile phone

documents shop, entity dogma, which has the largest share in the mobile phone industry in japan, mickey go and you go and Tokyo twelve year, twelve I was a king. My eye paris was tricked so really because you know, without a mobile phone you can survive in the school. We text do each other using mobile phone. When I first got my mobile phone, I felt like I got some treasurer, your daddy, you, the other it's a gift I requested to my dad. I need a mobile phone for no matter what without a phone- and I can't talk to a friends of

because, usually most of the students at school talking about mobile phone, my getting along alone. Suddenly it didn't necessarily If you're relative was living a street away or living in another country, digital anthropic just any miller. I worked at that time with filipinos doing often domestic work in the uk, but their were left behind in the if the teens and until then they had maybe cassette tapes letters it took months and suddenly with phones. You had that what they call perpetual connection. We started to go from. Basically, these robber dollars black plastic devices, to phones becoming more of a fashion statements, and there are a number of different things, Eriksson, created, it'll inserts, which you could snapping around the key pad, which would have different colors of the rainbow we then saw knocker arriving with its covers. You could clip onto the devices and one of the most vibrant did.

Cease to be conceived a product called the motorola rainbow star tack, one here, the very rare that very collectible- and this was made up from four different types of plastics. So you had a red plastic, a green plastic, a yellow plastic and a blue plastic. Different parts of the phone were put together to create this multi colored feast of design. This was something that was really really cutting edge. There was a lot of fear amongst the mobile phone mate as to whether this is the right direction to going, but then we saw screens that lit up some people were the pink motorola razor, which is a particularly iconic, an hugely successful design product, which was a real object of desire in Japan. The phone is very much a part of a person's identity may often be decorated or graced with charm. Oh, we love to shining. We love to declaration of myself sure in Tokyo,

We want to try to make us like some speed There is some acute some big deal each case. It has a person, I d feeding and there were the, maybe you entail. What kind of a girl is she? What kind of a guy is e by the gate they declaration, my friend gay in he's cute, charming and sixty industry the meaning. Is he just a declaration? It took some time for connectivity to become widespread mobile phone. Ass, did begin springing up, and there was often controversial with questions over their safety in different parts of the world. you know, collectivity has always been a problem in a notably steve. Had many connectivity problems with his first development iphone a meaningless dropping calls from work to his house and multiple times. Every trip Then we didn't know if it was a design faults of the phone or if there is proper

with the cellular network infrastructure. To this day, we still have dropped calls in not just cellular voice connectivity. It's also data connectivity. Our ability to maintain a consistent least fast data collection is still. Romantic. I think, with the advent of satellite communications from our phones were starting to see the ability to connect straight to satellite, bypassing cellular power, and some of that more traditional infrastructure. You know, and then there is more advancements coming with five g m, the ability to better decipher where you are for gps or ways for signals to pass through certain areas at the early finds with much more study than the fines. If today, because you had a smaller display, you had much bigger devices, there were lots of plastic around the components where The problem started to occur on these bigger devices that we have today these

asked slabs of a smartphone which are all screen and their designs based thin as possible, with as many components baked into them and they're the ones that became bunny well and ironically, people try and make these phones look beautiful or make them nice and thin. But then people end up having to put big cases around them to make sure that they don't break them. In the old days. The funds were pretty tough, and you can see that some of the funds that we have in the mobile phone museum, which have had lots of knox and bumps, but there still in pretty good shape. A big development in the evolution of the cell phone was the emergence of text messaging. I was designing software and counting it. Neil pap was a twenty two. suffrage near working for single group and the uk when he sent the first text message in December. Ninety ninety two,

and then one day somebody said hey. We need someone to go down to vodafone and help integrate that into the phone network and test it with them. So I volunteered to get out there and then eventually, we got to the day where we sent my message in I was merry christmas because it was a text message that was sent to one of the directors about a phone and he was at that christmas party stand. The phones could only receive they couldn't stand. There was another year or something like that before the phones good sand, but I always like in the situation to a bit like a scene from the man in black movie, I was sitting there in this way room at a terminal, there's always racks if equipment and these fans going and its noisy and these hot air as cold air and standing around me were half a dozen men in black guys in black suits on phones talking to the

people. As I understand it, there were in the room the other side debris in a hotel or something and they're the ones. That said, do it now and then send to them, and then they kind of nod and give me a thumbs up. So that's how I knew it worked. I think I remember driving home thinking what you'll have for dinner tonight: chef pete. what so, it was just a day for me, like any other neil says he didn't even on a cell phone. At the time I didn't have a mobile phone I couldn't afford one back. Then I was a lonely software engineer and there was ten years later that I was riding a taxi in Madrid and I got a phone call. Someone said like the bbc on the phone. They want to talk to you and it's like why and it's like. Oh the ten years since text messaging and it's like oh yeah, I guess it is, isn't it That was when the realisation that year is in everyone's texting. It's coming. and Neal says there were actually several special moments. I spend a number

is going around the world to different phone operators pudding in these text messaging systems. I remember I went to vote to come a spin off a vodafone in johannesburg in south africa. I arrived on sites like me in the morning into this big tower. Building, where no windows, and by lunchtime they were sending text messages. I came in. I bang that system. and again you can think like a case of this is the first text messaging system in south africa or something it's found that it's nice to go places and have things that people can use having been involved in designing part of it myself and then helping install it when you're sitting there down the pub with your mates and he whips his phone Allah. What I bought yesterday or something some swish in nokia. You can say send me a text. I can tell you exactly what it's doing, and I put that system in that was exciting, that you could almost touch something that you worked on it and people were using it because of you It was a hundred and sixty characters that was the maximum to start with making best

use of your resources and having only a hundred and sixty characters putting ally while and the lack of staff made his eager type longer messages. I never into to that. I always type things out vs there was that whole language and then the discussion after that how texting has destroyed the english language in kids are writing at school, and things like that yeah, that's not my fault. By the way the they introduced. What I think, after a few years, where they called concatenation messaging, which is like you could send more. So if you send three huh If the characters would actually behind the scenes, it would send through text messages. What I used to love about that, if you remember the old days when you used to sit there with your old, maybe desktop computer, and you have a pair of those cheap speakers and your cell phone would be on the desk. You'd. Get that that de de de de de de de de de de de noise, I'm through on the speakers and sometimes it was funny cost

used to use it when we were testing some of this stuff for text messaging there. If you expected to get to text messages and the phone can sometimes the phone doesn't necessarily beep the phone, can consume the message it can. Actually, my without notifying you and you buy usually speak as he is better here. The mariah it heritage. That is a dead end. It would stop an empty. Did he get another one. He gave one two and sometimes three good. I was expecting three messages on the firemen and I came I like

Techno gonna music. I've heard a few there where they have that noise bill him to some other risk. I love that. I love that noise. A group of people tried very hard to use texting creatively british poet in macmillan, so you would shrink words two letters round our way. We are right and that becomes or eight on a text, and so words would get shrunk. See you you do. People dismiss that as a kind of is not proper english and you go well. Thank goodness, but that is not proper. English is a kind of poetry, so people would text each of the little texting haiku things they could see. You later

what interested me so much with these little poems that people were there were poems that people would send. You knew what they meant, because all the word wasn't there. You are still understood the word asking so many questions about language and what languages. If I type letter c? U l t I c? U later, I still don't mean see you later, but somehow what's happening, the language is becoming more magical or so people would send poetic texts to each other, the precursor of tweet people, would glory in the idea that somehow you could send somebody these tiny little bit of text from wherever you were to wherever there. I think. That's why excited is. Is this thing this instant one of the really interesting things about the developed texting is where it happened. The place where it really became the dominant form of phone use initially was the philippines and people in places like the states etc will not using.

At that time. It's fortuitous factors like it happened to be either free in one place, whereas phone calls might have been expensive, in which case you will get that quick transition, people in the philippines, cottoned onto that and yes, they were texting all day that there was no question we could do. The same. We just didn't think anybody would care about their original self. Creator, Martin cooper again, we are already preparing a page picture with patient with a big business. There were fifty billion people in the united states it was peters, had we had papers that were in effect, text pagers, but we thought at least the mobile phone would supplant the patriots. There are people who'd, never talk on the phone they only use to There are other people just use mobile phone or some people don't use any of that. They just using google flowed to access the internet. this kind of iran, or do we call this instrument that can do somebody, It is a computer at the

call it before this is controlled and connected fifty years of the cell phone from the b see world service. The first mobile phone call on india was made in eighteen, eighty, five in west bengal and a few years late, as mobile phone. You spread serpentine potential human, a finnish anthropologist carried out research into the imp, of mobile phones in the west, bengali village of georgia, Usually young men were most motivated to get a mobile phone and they had to convene step aaron. But then they realise that mobile phones were ideal for staying in touch with once relative

women, usually mary outside their native village. He saw it was really big change, positive chase for women to be able to stay in touch with their parents even after merits. Around four percent of the villagers were doing some kind of business and they realized very soon that its forms are useful for business like there was this chicken farmers whose income from raising chicken went up fivefold after he got the fallen because he could get orders when he was transporting the chicken, the next town Was around ten kilometres from this fleet, so one could cycle there and there were no short cuts, but it took time and they were buses when we started assessing their personal forms, it was easier for them to travel, because the rest of the family felt that even if women were not at all, they were safe, because if there was any problem they could call home sovereign battered herself,

into the community living alongside local families and observing various uses of the phone in the village. In the late nineteenth he's an early two, thousands in two thousand and three there were ten people hope the mobile phone in this village of around two thousand and five hundred people, and by two thousand and thirteen, every household had a mobile phone, so it was really drastic crow. And and tat happen in entire india. In twenty years it started around two thousand and twenty years to form density went up from. I think it was from one percent to almost hundred percent. So what happened in this village reflects well. What happened in the rest of the country in the mood two thousands I was involved with the development of the iphone. I was one of the team at apple working jobs. When we announced the phone that set the clock running on a deadline

at a certain amount of time after it was publicly announced where we could get the phone certified for sale. This was an eighteen t cellular thing, so there was a lot of pressure leading up to that date. Not only two while the world, but also to make sure that it can be available for sale. The development of the phone was incredibly stressful for everybody. Myself include that was one of the factors leading up to me splitting from my now ex wife the stress on the devotion to the job that it took a team, and I were responsible for pretty much everything you hated about your first iphone, the cellular connected that seemed to never be able to hold a call or bluetooth. That seemed to have problems connecting to your speakers or wifi. That was having dropped connections to your access point. It was frustrating for us as well, because we didn't quite know radio a very difficult thing to sort out, especially with all the conditions that it has to operate in big thick, concrete walls. Aren't friends with wifi signals, a room like a big metal cage.

Is impervious to his cellular connectivity. So those are some of the things that we had a work around the scene outside the fifth avenue shopping. New york resembled movie premier, Smelly unshaven people as the stars, while they had camped out four days in the heat of dust. I was there on that now face, day in two thousand seven when Steve jobs and failed? The first I found to the world? are you getting it? This is one devise calling it. I thought we had a bottle of whisky and we're doing shots after every part of the demo succeeded because we didn't know it was gonna work or not, indeed done hersel after rehearsal, and there is always something that went wrong an extraordinarily stressful time, just not knowing if he was gonna, be able to pull it off the time when I figured we had

Something was when I was driving around and I was lost and remedies for the days were you'd printout directions on mapquest whatever you use to navigate, or god forbid paper maps to figure out where you were member being at a stop light- and I didn't know where to go- and I pulled up my prototype iphone just from the web browser from safari. I able to find directions, and it was gps at the time. It was just a list of directions, but for me that first time I knew, while this thing is really cool. Apples, iphone was a turning point. Certainly, but apple has always had competition. The battle to be leader in the global for market now worth nearly five hundred billion dollars has seen samsung from south korea and apple regularly battle it out for the top spot. Others the max include johnny above vivo waterway, all chinese companies, first time. I remember interacting with an iphone in particular, was actually on a week

away with friends, catherine price, author of the book, how to break up with your phone. We worked hard to get this time to spend together, and I had one friend who had an iphone- and I remember all of us begging her if we could check out her I found so we could check our email and That was, I think, the first time I realize they the magnetic attraction of these devices. I was just as guilty as my friends, but reflecting back on it, I'm like wow we'd like work to get there again together, and all of us were lining up to use this device. That would allow us to re tether ourselves to our work lives One word that is now very much in the ether is selfie, which entered the online version of the oxford english dictionary in two thousand thirteen, and certainly taking a picture how Ben transformed by the use of the mobile phone at first was fairly rudimentary. honestly. I remember pretty green photos that weren't colored corrected or had limited zooming capability, but since

arrival, the smartphone taking pictures has become a much bigger part of all of our lives. We had the advent of digital photography before the mobile phone. technological analysed and founder of the mobile phone museum ben wood, and then people thought it would be interesting to add camera technology to a mobile phone which started with clip on cameras that went on to the bottom of the phone, and you could it's that accessory and take pictures. Then the camera went into the phone and the quality got better and better, and we now have a point where mobile phones are by far and away the most ubiquitous camera available to people it's the camera. always have with them. The advent of social media sharing experiences be that photographs of videos has been enabled by the mobile phone but is also unable to other things like citizen journalism on the seventh, the July two thousand and five when we had a terrorist attack here in london, people were able to film what was happening on the cheap fines in the tunnels of london underground. No film crew would ever have been allowed.

that's. It wouldn't have been safe to do that and all of a sudden we started to get a different perspective on news gathering. The camera in the phone and its ubiquity has really been transformative. Society, digital anthropologist, Annie miller, has examined the impact of mobile phones in every continent. Members of his team lived for sixteen months and the areas they explored occasion. What my work is the sheer level of difference between places around the world in how they ve taken advantage of the smartphone and ability Supposed images- and I met when we first started working one of the team- is working in a very low income, a kind of squatter settlement in brazil and people there. They were posting on. All curdle then face Book image is where they want to show these half build homes they were living in, they might have buzz unity. All I knew the gable. I knew the swimming pool Hayes

Looking good against those kind of backgrounds and the person working in brazil vote without pretty obvious? That's what they want to do it, and then the person is working. Delay was also working in relatively low income community. Actually, people work down the mines and they turned round to the person mozilla. What are you talking about? the people I work with everybody knows each other. You can't post something that is intrusive life, because people weeks Is you because they do not really know? What are you trying to pretend to be? Nobody would pose those kind of pictures they would pose the everyday life. Everybody knows is too to them and said We realise that, although we are talking about posting energies, the values that cultural expectations were completely different between, on the one hand, brazil and ugly

had mobile phones have affected different parts of the world in a variety of ways, let's move uganda, we working with we very low income migrants into the city, and we actually thought well, this smartphone, maybe the exacerbates the separation between older people left in the villages and young people who come into the towns and in fact we were quite surprised that we found the opposite. The key thing about smartphones. in east africa, has been this use of mobile moneymakers people, don't have banks and you don't have other ways and in a sense, exchanging bodies of the phone has become the key to this. So actually,

own was being used by these young people in the towns to support their parents and grandparents back in the village is because for these people anybody comes it is it's a financial crisis. You don't have money for the doctors. You don't have money for the medicines and they really need this way or people realities with maybe at least a little bit of money who can transfer to them as they get elderly. Of course, they also have medical problems, and those accosted me now in china may influence on chinese society for a very long time now has the innocent political and people, who are older hand identify with the projects of the chinese state, will they know that one of the ideals today is the china? Should you know glow in its significance in the world part, being in the vanguard of new digital technologies

so, whereas in other countries we find older people find it difficult when it comes to something like smartphone, older people in china, they actually want to be the people who are exemplary so actually kind is the one place where we found. You know who go into a restaurant and you over a conversation in his young people. Turning their grandma and say grandma, we came if you have a meals again, you spending time on the smartphone, with the advent of air available through the phone, there's been a huge transformation in the way we connect for a personal lives dating apps have begun to replace old fashioned physical d, as a way of getting together. It's no longer at first sight, rather love at first swipe, but actually, where we met loved ones was already starting to be influenced by the mere existence of the mobile phone. For the first time, couples could have conversations well from prying ears of their family and friends. If you're, with someone

living with groups of people and you, your privacy. Basically, jerry Barnett worked intact in the nineteen nineties now commentator on the impact devices on our personal lives. We didn't have that kind of privacy before mobile phones You couldn't hand out your home number in those kinds of situations so yeah. I think it made it easier to play it. It made it easier to date, multiple people. At the same time, in the nineties, especially and pre social media. There is a group of guys I had a huge crush on in high school, came by my window. I lived on the second floor of an apartment building in manhattan and they threw pebbles and they invited me to come out with them on my parents, wouldn't let me they were like the nicest people my parents should have. Let me- and I was so sad and then my parents change their mind. You know two minutes later, I'm like you can go out and I ran into the street looking around for these guys and no, I couldn't find them. There is no way to get in touch with them because there were no phone, so in the sense of my personal romantic past, I guess I was totally harmed by.

I cell phones, but a lot of times. What we do on our phones is actually, I think, less meaningful than the face to face interaction we might otherwise have had if we didn't have them. I've actually spoken to bartenders, who comment on the fact that, back in the day, you have people sitting at the bar talking to each other and meeting each other and if nothing just having a moment of connection and chatting, but now everyone sitting in a row just staring at their screens off dating app so there's the irony of you come into the bar to meet somebody, but in fact you're just on your phone, like looking at people who aren't in the park with you there's always somewhat more interesting than the person in the room with you at the time. However, amazing that person is, and the mobile in the internet has opened up the whole world, then it's quite hard to bring yourself back into them.

Went to the person your with, and so united is doubtless part of the reason why sexes declined simply because we used to have sex because, in part, one of the reasons was because we were board, and we now have more interesting things to look at one of the problems dealing this device is that people call it a phone? The starting point is the thing: give it a place within which we now live and form it. We do many different things so Like a home has different wounds. We have the place where we're gonna entertainment. We have the place where we're meeting and talking with people. We have place where with organ, seeing our lives and our calendar, etc. It is much much more than a phone

starting with this idea, that is now a site which we inhabit. I think gives you much more of a sense of just how important this device is become every day, and it has been often dramatic and quite logical and quick to see how markets has now spread. But then the income parlor and cameroon. It is still mainly mobile phones, but then this smartphone, maybe head between people. There are, of course downsides from our over of cell phones. Do these devices simply take up too much of our time are stifling us. I think the way the winter over their smartphones right now. They definitely do controller lives. Cap, prices, the founder of screen life balance, dont come one of the big things I try to help. People do is to create relationships, were there in control all of their fallen, rather than the other way around, because I've heard from literally fast

the people around the world about how they feel like their beholden to their devices. In that they ve kind of lost control of their lives. They can't control their own behaviors. They keep finding their phones in their hands and wondering how they got there and what happened to the past thirty forty five minutes hour of their lives, and we have all had that experience. So my goal is to help us turn our phones from temptations back into tools, but unfortunately, in many cases right now, it's such a temptation for ever any reasons that they really do: control us and its benefiting companies that are making awful lot of money off of us being controlled by the absent our phones. The way we interact therefrom or, more specifically, the way that our phones and the apps are designed really encourages us to be distracted all the time, and you start to see the effects of that where you suddenly realize. Oh, I can't even read a magazine article or like a paragraph without feeling the need to reach for my phone. I mean I hear from so many people about how they feel that their attention span is just ruined, and you can see that it's heavy

impacts on culture. I mean songs are now being written that are shorter than they used to be where you have the chorus or the hook earlier in the song, because people aren't paying attention long enough to actually wait for the chorus or, if how television programmes are structured. We are all suffering from the destruction of our ability to focus and maintain or concentration, and that has impacts on so many is of life. I am deeply disturbed by the impact that technology has on our ability to concentrate shouting about there, It is using mobile phones in japan, sharia mexico because when I talked with colleagues jude in there, situation in japanese are very not like a human way. using just ashore to word robotic its to understand. When I talk with plates do then I was let me just say that

ask them again again over that time, I feel, like I came from thousand years ago, Japan, I spin with the mobile too much too much more than my sleeping hours. The moment I wake up, always with me pick up a chicken email, whatsapp summertime client. Don't like asking me what's happening in Japan, that I kik whatsapp the first I open my gmail and tick tick tick. This is important. It is not important. It is. I sought it out because of my job I then decided to be a journalist. You had to talk to people to move. I become a part of my body. Far from controlling us, we have, in some situations, managed to make the phone work on our terms,

many good natured people of producing new health acts. But when we started working particularly in brazil, we found something unexpected. Firstly, the people, especially the older people, we tend to work with just did like these acts. They didn't want to live weight of different apps, they had to learn, but they were very creative and they found ways of using the acts that have become familiar for help, purposes. It was just ordinary brazilians who would find a kind of work around that enable them to make this an incredibly useful for health, which was the original intention of what's up and they get to get one more brazilian example somebody who was concerned about it.

Person not taking their beds, and then it set up a strewing of people who were concerned to make sure that the person hadn't one person have available the next person would so just creative ways and taking popular and familiar smartphone apps and employing them to improve people's health. The emergence of, what's up the next generation of texting certainly seems to have caught on. In many places, older and younger people are making use of the ability to create multiple communication groups, things what's that locally the socalled zappia zappia spread like wildfire because it became this way in which people could constantly be in touch with each other If you know many brazilians, you can't think of a population that is more sociable and why

So who is suspects- and certainly I would echo- is that they are using the funds to be even more sociable. So in them since the phone became a very brazilian phone. But this has its challenges. Victor Dmitri. In rio, we have a group of friends. We play soccer with. A group of friends relate to drink with and like five, groups than different? What's up groups for a small parts of her life, and sometimes feel overwhelmed in having to answer to all those groups and all those messages, and we have to deal with for example, those transmission lists. That also exists where people window liking it is the lower whether the person descending personally

visual, a lesson to you or whether it's like a better nice masses. So I think it's all very complex and we have been facing challenges that didn't exist like some years ago and that their changing dramatic society, because we are over well do wake up with our foreign and we vote to sleep with our full and it's a constant and the fact that their phone started using the internet. Think you changed everything since you can send. master when everyone There's no reason not to send so you're always sending messages. Bird does also demand that she should answer fast. I mean life's getting faster and faster all the time, so that aspect I mean, makes me a little anxious, there has been an explosion in written communication with the arrival of the smartphone, but voice notes are becoming popular

he used a lot in brazil. Victor and Dmitri have mixed feelings about them. I prefer calling, I think, it's the most First of all, a degree they mean, though quietly and regressing aids, the closest you can get from being distant in being able to satisfy the other person saying how they're saying it and they feel like that. The vice notes. I particularly don't like it very much because I think it's like a speech it, so you make your speech than the other person makes their speech, and so it goes. But I I think it has that interesting direction. That marks the conversation may have more and more friends say I can stand like people calling me. Why not send a like a vice note. I know I kind of have mixed feelings, because sometimes the conversations not actually flowing both ways. There's one person that talks a lot and you can finally wage of interrupting that person.

so it can sometimes be more democratic way. You sad voice now that There are also people, like my modern delay voice. Now china means so fifty years on. What's the lasting impact, do we like the cell phone? I wish I could live without it. So do I, but I cannot not use it, position. I have to tell people about my concerts. I have to stay on the surrounding time, making videos making content. Sorry, It's ringing miko in japan she'd, really like arrest from her phone. Yes, I need to be off from mobile, if coded misunderstanding with communications,

I tried to control the mobile phone because I feel like they're my servant. That gets me know every time I click click click sounds like you. I'm very touched a nerve it stuck to my nerve. I had to react like I had to say I open the open immediately, like I might say, it'd be computer to anybody. He gets a click sound. I had to reply something like I feel, like I'm really sincere, leading lead eating my life. I had the control I had the contract had lyme owner. I tried to limit the time I spend on on the social media in particular two hours a week, asmund and bussing in ghana them down movies. We put our phones, are we probably sundays, no one is going to talk to anyone until a certain time, so that's helping to balance their time, because if not, you could spend your whole day on your phone always everything ideas and in full.

What movies to tamper with my family, my friend, it's under foreign, was out to digest and of my data. there is a need to do something online, and then I went there and enough spending more time than I imagine, but I'm trying to find a balance here, Some of us feel rather controlled. Now, surely that's going to intensify with the arrival of a I well, maybe not some people think I will actually allow phones to become much more of a human experience instead of holding a phone up to our face. They envision a future where it gets projected on her hand, or I listened in on our conversations and acts accordingly sits essentially like a lapel pen dead. Can projects a screen at here. and so I mean in some ways that's really cool and the other ways. I'm like. Oh, my gods, who are all going to be wearing surveillance devices on our lapels that are listening to and recording visually, like everything that's happening like whoa, Kate, I'd be curious about where that data would go my my phone as my identity. So to me it's like a kin to losing your driver's license or your passport. What do you do

this case as well, you know the backup, as you go to and the u s the envy, the department departmental motor vehicles. If you lose your passport, you go to your consulate in you, get up an emergency one, your phone phone yucas stock is that good? I dont know that it's good, but is that a problem? but we ve created for today's world yeah and I think maybe there is an opportunity for people to different kinds of recovery mechanisms to get to be invented to solve the problem we created in the last decade. I think I inadvertently created a monster not on purpose but be can't deny the fact that, when seeing it everywhere in everyone's faced on people are tripping over selves falling into fountains, because they're so involved with what their phone is doing and we ve lost that immediacy of being in a moment with other people or being aware surroundings, and I think we need to take a break you never knew. We should check out. You really have to learn how to do it.

Surely we have complete the learning process here, original cellphone creator, Martin cooper, I know that I couldn't phone away and go for a day without looking at it. The most. I know My wife can't go five minutes available when you gonna revolutionizing technology, like the slogan of takes a generation and sometimes even more to learn, controlled, unconnected fifty years of the sulphur Was presented by me, Andy grignon, producer was actually berne and it was a made in manchester production for the BBC world service. How do we navigate have again humans, naturally clean and tidy? And what exactly is this?

Computer again smell enhance your appetite. Coiled science is the port cost that takes your science. Questions on goes in. Search of the answers by pressing for process is a distant rings, difference that would make because they ve been some really fascinating. Research into this that's crowd science from the BBC world service. By love this question: just such a crowd signs were having found this would cost. The. But you are cellular, it's just twenty nine. Ninety nine per line for one two or three lives. So you don't need that robot daughter, you built to get a fourth line for family glamorizing rope, Elizabeth she's, not going. The road will prevail, boy get the low twenty nine. Ninety nine per lie we were cellular built for us terms, applied visit you a cellular, dot, com, pretty death, we value human connection with fever, distractions cellular built for us visit your? U s! Cellular authorized agent located in eighteen. Fifty two decorator pike in athens.