Sharpe's Opinion

Fighting in the Phone Wars

This passage from Stephen Fry’s latest ‘blessay’ tickled me immensely:

When two businessmen drop down in neighbouring aeroplane seats and each gets out a smartphone an electricity will crackle between them like that between two sexually heated adolescents whose thighs have accidentally touched in the backseat of the school bus. If one businessman fishes from his shirt pocket a BlackBerry while the other gets out an iPhone a whole range of complex thoughts will begin to boil in the brains of each: resentment, contempt, insecurity and irritation are merely the emotions bubbling closest to the surface: deep down, dark and primal forces stir. We do not possess antlers, horns or tusks, we cannot display fans of feather or manes of fur, the best we can do is express our personality, aspirations, beliefs, outlook, sexual potency, status, right to breed and place in the hierarchy through the choices we make in our possessions: and no possession, here in the early part of the twenty-first century, speaks quite so loudly as our smartphone. Once upon a time it was out motorcar and in the future it may well be a robot, a rocket-pack or a hoverpenis that defines us, but for the moment it is, for good or ill, a smartphone.

I don’t spend much time on business flights, so haven’t had this experience very often, but even I can admit to a pang of recognition stemming from my time in Bournemouth. I shall simply report that whilst Charlotte Gore, Mark Thompson and I all use iPhones, Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale and Sara Scarlett are Crackberry addicts.

You can make of that what you will.