[Error: unknown template qotd]

If I could uninvent the cell phone - if, perhaps, some malevolently-minded genie were to pop out of a bottle of Coke which I was in the process of transferring to the bin, and told me that I could erase any one invention from the face of the earth without any other development suffering as a consequence - I would do so. A chance to rid the world of novelty ringtones and hi-I'm-on-the-train, and idiots playing tinny, sub-transistor quality MP3s through their phone's speakers on the top deck of the 259? Where do I sign up?

Face it: we're slaves to our phones.

How many times have I wondered, is this thing working for me? Or am I working for it?

I sometimes suspect that I'm the one who's working for my phone. The expectation that we should be able to get in touch with anyone we want, any time we want, is a pernicious one, and it does none of us any favors. Make sure you keep your phone on, my parents tell me, even though I'm 26 years old and have been living alone since 2003. Why? Why do I have to be contactable all the time, whether I want to be or not? Why should I have to drop everything the minute someone calls my cell, no matter what else I may be doing?

And yet I know that I'm in the minority. The average person, on receiving a call or a text, will do just that. They will stop what they're doing, they will reach for that infernal little gadget and - utterly ignoring the living, breathing human being who is right there in front of them - they'll immediately answer. Sometimes, if you're lucky, they'll apologize. Most of the time, though, they just go for the cell, snatching madly for it as it blats out a distorted, tinny version of some tune that was red hot for five minutes six months previously, thinking of nothing but how to appease the tiny God at the bottom of their pocket, or buried in their handbag.

Certainly they're not thinking of the person standing right before them - someone who was speaking them them already, and might have expected to be considered more important than a few words on a screen. No. Conversation is out until the victim of the cell has answered a text message. I'm sorry, where were we? Just had to take that call, read that text. Just gotta reply to this--

No. You don't have to. You want to take that call. You want to blank someone you're already with to answer a text that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, could wait. You don't have to answer your phone just because it's there - but the bell rings, and we salivate.

The almighty phone demands attention, and attention it gets.

As if that wasn't enough, our cellphones encourage us to think of ourselves as indispensable. The average girl in the street believes that she, like on-call surgeons and government ministers, must never be out of contact. God forbid that she miss a text or a call because she's sat in the shadows watching a movie, or is working on an essay in the library, or is sitting in class. To Hell with my assignment, to Hell with the half-dozen other people struggling to study. Kayleigh's calling, Brandon's been talking to his ex! Oh babe, I'm so sorry, he's like totally not worth it, if he's still hanging all over that skank when he's, like, got someone as awesome as you--hang on a sec, some bitch of a librarian's just given me the stank-eye, won't be a sec, girl, I'll go, like, find the stairs...

Granted, there are times when a person genuinely needs to be contactable at a moment's notice, and some people who need to be near a phone likewise. If the malevolent genie could make an exception for surgeons and heads of state, I wouldn't even hesitate when they made their offer. Most of us, however? We're not on call, and we don't need to behave as if we are. I highly doubt that half the people showing up for the 7:20 screening of Confessions of a Shopaholic are expecting to be called urgently away at a moment's notice - and yet I'm sure that if one were to check the pockets and bags of the crowd, they would discover that at least a fifth of those present had, in the face of repeated warnings about turning off their cells during the movie, kept their phones on. Why? Do they seriously plan on getting up and answering them? If they don't, why the Hell leave them on? Do they really believe that they're just that important?

Maybe they do. There are, after all, people out there who leave their cell phones on in the emergency wards of hospitals, despite being told by the staff that the signals a cell phone sends out could interfere with medical equipment. The jury may as yet be out as to how real this threat is, but when people start to consider their own ability to send a text message more important than someone else's right to a functional ventilator or dialysis machine, there's something seriously wrong in the world.

In the face of that degree of me-first selfishness, what chance does the cinema-goer who just wants to watch Confessions of a Shopaholic in peace have? What chance does the weary commuter who just wants to sit quietly until they get home? Hell, what chance does anyone?

Besides, wouldn't the world have been better off without the Crazy Frog?

Mobile phone genie, I'll be waiting for your call.