I’m a 5-foot-3-inch person, but I’m beginning to feel like Gulliver in Lilliput electronics land.
Anyone who watched the Summer Olympics probably saw the commercial in which a bunch of Australians on a front porch in the outback talk about the sissy-sized laptop computer one of them has just bought. By the time the Summer Games get to the land down under four years from now, the proud owner announces, the laptops will be even smaller. His cohorts are impressed.
I’m not a shrink, but the question that arises in my mind is whether we are experiencing some sort of reverse macho about size. Nor am I the incredible shrinking woman. Therefore, it seems to me the consumer electronics industry, including cellular handset manufacturers, is getting perilously close to crossing an invisible line*…*the one that divides small-is-beautiful from small-is-too-small.
It truly is impressive that the work of a single Pentium chip used to involve computers taking up the equivalent of a 20-story office building, according to a sales clerk in the electronics department of a Midtown Manhattan Staples Office Supply Store. At roughly six-inches-by-two-inches, and 5.1 ounces, the Panasonic EB H70 model is the tiniest cellular phone the store has for sale, he said. “They’re getting so small, I’d be afraid I’d lose it and wouldn’t even miss it,” added the Dennis Rodman wannabee, sporting orange-dyed hair and a name tag that says-what else?-D. Rodman.
The candid clerk also referred me to another store uptown, where he said he had seen a flip phone even smaller than the Panasonic model in stock at Staples. I headed downtown instead, to The Wiz, which carries Audiovox, Sony and Ericsson models of comparable size to the non-flip Panasonic model at Staples.
I read in a local newspaper recently a snide comment that chiropractors must be the direct beneficiaries of the miniaturization of cellular handsets. Perhaps the same local chiropractor who donated an aerobics class membership to a Chamber of Commerce prize drawing, which I won, will soon donate cellular phones.
Deep in the recesses of my non-computer memory is a vague recollection from junior high school biology about a concept in genetics called deviation from the mean. To ensure survival, Mother Nature has implemented a self-correcting mechanism into the gene pool of human beings to prevent us from becoming a race of either giants or midgets. There isn’t a manmade R&D facility with a longer track record than Mother Nature. Just something to keep in mind.
