The mobile phone is arguably one of the most ironic inventions ever made.

The portable device which was created to assist us with effective communication has ceremoniously turned its congregation into the walking dead.  Wherever we go all we see is Zombies.  You see them everywhere, haunting bus stops or shuffling down the street.  Heads bowed in adoration – tap - tap - tap.   

The instant message needs our immediate attention or the world just might end.  

The latest smartphones open the world into the palm of our hand but never

before have we been so far removed from it.  We can explore a wealth of information, glance images of places we will never go or connect with people we will never meet.  I begin to wonder if we have we lost our sense of adventure.  Do we have any reason for exploration anymore?  Content now to consume endless facts but forever distant from the knowledge we have learned.

Have we become puppets to the mobile master?  Internet, Facebook, Twitter,

Skype and Youtube the list goes on.  All created to enable us to communicate better but somehow we have become lost in a cyber world.  We have forgotten our basic human need for personal relationships.  We no longer see the light in a person’s eyes or that crease in an endless smile.  Gone is the sound of laughter - it’s now replaced with a digital ‘lol’.  All we are left with is a vacant stare fixated on a two inch screen.  Does anyone remember freedom from the relentless ringtone?  Gone are the days when humanity does not sleep with one ear open.  One ding and our lives are interrupted.

I learnt an interesting fact the other day.  Whilst checking in for my daily

Facebook fix.  I noticed in my feed an article on how texting has become the new orgasm.  I didn’t read the article but it did make me wonder about what other impacts the mobile phone may have on humanity.  After drifting into the World Wide Web I found that compulsive texting releases the hormone dopamine.  Dopamine is a neurotransmitter which is used to regulate our pleasure and reward functions and our emotional responses within our brain.  The ring tone or vibration can alert us to our next pleasurable fix through the releasing of dopamine.  Such is the instant reward we become trapped in an eternal loop of pleasure seeking and reward.  The result can lead to psychological addiction.  Some studies have shown heavy mobile use can cause depression, sleep disorders and other mental health problems.  We are now being given guidance on healthy mobile phone usage in an attempt to prevent such ailments. 

I decide to leave my web browsing and head out with my two dogs to Cann

Wood.  At its highest point it is 145 metres above sea level.  Here there are remains of an Iron Age settlement now called Boringdon Camp.  Boringdon is an old Saxon term ‘Burgh y Don’ which means ‘the entrenched place on a hill’.  Today all that exists is the circular rampart.  It is estimated it once held twenty or so wooden huts within its frame.  Inside the rampart my dogs stampede like crazy buffalo around the circular field.  I climb up the side of the rampart, sit and take in the view.  Dead ahead a panorama of Plymouth is set in the distance.  I can see endless rows of roof tops and redundant chimneys now displaced with iridescent panels worshipping the solar rays.  To my left the sea reflects like a sheet of metal shimmering against the sunlight.  To my right distant Moorland Tors and an ancient mining chimney peak up into the horizon.  This mining chimney was abandoned years ago but it makes me think of the environmental impact of tin mining on our world today. 

        The United Kingdom has more mobile phones than people.  It is estimated there are over five billion phones worldwide.  When we go into our local phone shop and evaluate the latest technology held in our shiny new toy, do we realise the ecological impact that our increasing demand has on other parts of our world?   Tin is one of the key components in all mobile phones.  In Indonesia tin mining has become an environmental disaster.  The once bountiful tropical island has been reduced to a barren waste land.  Evaluation of tin mining on the Indonesian landscape and ocean has produced shocking statistics.  Deforestation has reduced soil fertility which has had an adverse effect on the local farming industry.   Hundreds of abandoned mines filled with polluted water are thought to be responsible for the increase of malaria.  Silt from dredging the seabed for tin has caused the death of coral, sea grass and mangroves.  It also drives fish, turtles and other marine life away.  They say that it is possible to reduce the environmental impact caused by tin mining by simply stepping out of the trend of purchasing a new mobile every eighteen months.  Just keeping our mobile phones a couple of years longer could reduce environmental impacts by an estimated 40%.  It’s a thought worth pursuing but that it not why I came here.

I came here to be away from interruptions.  I like to sit here, to meditate and

think on decisions I need to make.  There is something special about the ambient sound of nature.  Its heartbeat is a pulsing melody of birdsong, with grasshoppers and buzzing insects providing a percussion of beats to the natural rhythm of life.  The stillness of nature is actually very busy.  Sometimes I watch a ladybird on an important errand travelling up a long stem of grass or buzzards soaring like tailless kites in the sky.  Nature here never intrudes.  It is content to carry on its work as it absorbs you into its calmness.   Off to one side is a deserted tree.  Once I saw a deer foraging beneath it but not today.  I hear thudding footsteps as my dogs run towards me, checking I’m still here.  Reassured they run off in boundless rough and tumble play like two teenage boys full of swagger. 

Today I have a dilemma.  I have been procrastinating over it for some

months.  Do I leave my employment.  I reason out all the possible pathways my life could take.  Sometimes my mind drifts off thinking about the ancient settlement buried below me and the struggles and decisions they had to make.  To me their life seemed much simpler.  They didn’t have bills to pay or mortgages to keep.  Somewhere along the way did they make a wrong choice.  After all they are no longer here.  Maybe they just moved away when the mines on the horizon gave up their toil.  Finally I make the decision to leave, not the field but my employment. 

A rustling from the solitary tree draws my attention.  The tree sounds like it is

clapping.  I walk over to take a closer look.  It stands motionless like the leaning Tower of Pisa.  Naked apart from ivy wrapped around its towering trunk.  I can still hear its applause although the breeze is as flat as the mole hills my dogs have demolished.  I stand and watch, trying to work out where the sound is coming from.  I recollect a song from primary school days, something like, ‘The trees of the field shall clap their hands.’  I think it’s about God or nature but I can’t quite remember.  It unnerves me.  Everything feels larger, spacious and empty or maybe it is just the weight of a heavy decision now lifted.  I take out my mobile phone.  There’s no signal up here but I take a photo of the clapping tree.  As I put my mobile back into my pocket, I remember.  I remember a time before the incessant ring tone.  A time from my childhood before mobile phones were even invented.  When I used to play outside without a care in the world and time to go home was made known when the sun began to set.  That was a time of real freedom.

As I start to walk back towards my car I wonder how I would feel without my

mobile phone.  If I was asked to spend a day without it how would I react?  I can hear the arguments stirring in the back of my mind in defence of my need?  Someone might have to contact me in an emergency, I might breakdown in my car or I’m waiting on an important call . . .

the list goes on . . .

tap - tap - tap.