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Yet Another Modest Proposal
Aug. 19th, 2010 09:19 pm
That guardian of your interests, the RIAA, has come up with yet another way to service you. They are pushing a law to force the installation of FM radio receiver chips into all cell phones.
Their logic is that digital services, including streaming music to cell phones, have hurt the radio market RIAA controls. And indeed, forcing radio chips into cell phones will help remedy the shocking lack of radio receivers in the United States (where, at last count, there were something like two or three radios for each person) and allow radio stations to expand their listenership without the unreasonable expense involved in producing programming that a person with more than half a brain would actually want to hear.
I applaud this approach and think it would be expanded. I think we should mandate the addition of more things to cell phones. I suggest we start by mandating chewing gum dispensers and a compartment to hold a pad of paper and a pencil.
To those who say that dispensing chewing gum has nothing to do with the purpose of a cell phone, I would point out that serving as a transistor radio has nothing to do with that either. And a chewing gum dispenser won't add much to the complexity of the cell phone, require a second (or third) antenna, and drain the phone's battery the way adding an FM chip would.
And certainly no industries have been hit as hard by the rapid advance of digital technology as the paper and pencil manufacturers. Doing something to force digital mavens to buy their share of paper and pencils is only fair.
I see no end to the benefits of this approach. Eventually it will even revitalize the luggage industry, devastated as it is by the recession's bite on recreational travel. For surely the luggage industry will benefit tremendously when you need a good-sized suitcase to carry your blasted cell phone in.
Their logic is that digital services, including streaming music to cell phones, have hurt the radio market RIAA controls. And indeed, forcing radio chips into cell phones will help remedy the shocking lack of radio receivers in the United States (where, at last count, there were something like two or three radios for each person) and allow radio stations to expand their listenership without the unreasonable expense involved in producing programming that a person with more than half a brain would actually want to hear.
I applaud this approach and think it would be expanded. I think we should mandate the addition of more things to cell phones. I suggest we start by mandating chewing gum dispensers and a compartment to hold a pad of paper and a pencil.
To those who say that dispensing chewing gum has nothing to do with the purpose of a cell phone, I would point out that serving as a transistor radio has nothing to do with that either. And a chewing gum dispenser won't add much to the complexity of the cell phone, require a second (or third) antenna, and drain the phone's battery the way adding an FM chip would.
And certainly no industries have been hit as hard by the rapid advance of digital technology as the paper and pencil manufacturers. Doing something to force digital mavens to buy their share of paper and pencils is only fair.
I see no end to the benefits of this approach. Eventually it will even revitalize the luggage industry, devastated as it is by the recession's bite on recreational travel. For surely the luggage industry will benefit tremendously when you need a good-sized suitcase to carry your blasted cell phone in.
