Peter Rhodes on spaceships, cashless hotels and 50 years of mobile phones
You might assume from all the headlines that Nasa's Artemis II mission to the moon is, er, going to the moon.
Not exactly. Bristling with 21st century technology and with a carefully selected multicultural and mixed-gender crew, Artemis will merely fly around the moon some time in 2025. The next lunar walk is still years away. How strange it is that landing on the moon, so simple in the 1970s, is so difficult in the 2020s.
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On a working trip to Hong Kong in 1993, I boarded the Star Ferry to Kowloon and noticed I was the only passenger not chattering into a mobile phone. I honestly believed that you'd never see that scale of mass mobile ownership in Britain. Yet within a couple of years the mobile flood overwhelmed the UK as millions of Brits turned the mobile phone from a curiosity into a necessity.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the mobile. A generation has grown up regarding the mobile, and particularly the internet-linked smartphone, not merely as an essential accessory to life but almost as life itself. It's a mixed blessing. Mobile phones bring 24/7 communication but have elevated bullying, sex abuse, harassment and drug dealing to new and terrifying levels.
Until now there was one redeeming feature - nobody forced you to have a smartphone. But at this 50th anniversary , life without a mobile is becoming hard. From Covid passports to car parking, from hotel booking to dealing with government departments, the assumption is that smartphones are the norm and any customer without one is weird, awkward and probably unwanted.
I bet those Star Ferry customers and all the other mobile-phone newbies of years ago assumed this new technology would be their servant. Beware. It is turning into our master.
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Meanwhile, cash is no longer king. Booking a hotel room this week, I learned that the establishment doesn't accept cash payments in any form, anywhere on the premises. Progress, presumably.
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How to tell if someone is lying about their age? Show them the latest report that reservoirs serving the Midlands are now almost brimming at 96 per cent full. If they mutter “thank God,” you can safely assume they're over 60. Those of us who remember the great drought of 1976 have a special relationship with reservoirs. We like them nice and full, thanks.
