Through the life cycle of one mobile phone, we investigate the million andone ways in which the mobile has made itself indispensable to modern life. One in every two human beings has a mobile. We make this inanimate lump of plastic and minerals privy to our innermost secrets – our conversations with wives, lovers, family. It holds our family photos and it plays our favourite music. As an instrument of communication, it has its paradoxes. We dump people by text, we pretend to be deep in a ‘phone conversation to avoid speaking to real people. We bellow into it on trains and then are affronted anyone could have overheard our conversation. At the end of our strangely intimate relationship, it becomes one of the one billion phones discarded every year – reconditioned for re-use or smelted down for the precious metals it contains.
Menu
