On The Day of 5 Billion Mobiles

The sun rose July 8, 2010, the Earth spinning, the only difference were the Mobiles

Researchers had forecast it. Technologists looked forward to it. Few other people knew of it. But on July 8, 2010, there were 5 billion mobile phones on the planet.

From Kenja to Bangalore, Hamburg to LA, Belfast to Sydney, the mobiles came. I should say they moved because mobiles aren't in any one place for long. Like an ocean filled with fish, mobiles wander, migrate, integrate, communicate in a sea of liquid connectivity.

Like dots on a radar screen, the mobiles came, talking, walking, geolocating in space and time. At the speed of light streams of voice and data enveloped the Earth, floating on radio frequencies, dancing from cell towers, backhauling to Internet hubs, racing through fiber optic cables.

The mobiles were rich and poor, educated and yearning for knowledge. They tightly held small devices that magically enticed them to interact and engage. Many of the 5 billion charged their devices in tiny villages of Africa, some in large cities in Europe.

Others held glistening icons of color, occasionally touching tiny electronic buttons on glass screens, watching videos streaming across personal universes. But most mobiles held their devices to their ears, talking, listening, communing with other other inviisible mobiles somewhere else in beacons of light.

In India, the mobiles came--over half a billion--marching through fields of electronic dirt, through paved streets electronically charged, purchasing products. In China, a land of 600 million mobiles, it was as if Gaia had blessed the Earth with digital beings. 

And even more mobiles walked, some worried about privacy, others content with musical sounds heard only in their minds. Some were androids.

Others wore wireless band-aids monitoring their bodies. Others played games. In South Africa, disruptive technology spread across the land of mobiles. The Japanese had strange symbols appear on their screens of light.

And so the day came and went. Little changed across the vast landscape where mobiles lived. The sun began its descent, from East to West. And quiet came as mobiles, silently, slept.