Smartphones have been associated with extreme stress, euphoria, addiction, and even insanity. Oh, sorry, not smartphones -- regularphones. The telephone was invented in 1876, yet the concerns people had about it then are strikingly similar to the hand-wringing we now see over cellphone addiction: It will cause information overload, people will lose the ability to personally connect with one another, they'll try to port fighting games onto it but it just won't work without a third-party patch, etc.
One worry about the original phone, however, didn't make the leap to its modern descendant. People feared the telephone was an instrument of Satan. It was apparently a pretty natural reaction to have, because it happened independently in different locations. In one incident, the clergy in Ethiopia damned and burned the phone of the minister of justice because it shocked him. (That's why AppleCare doesn't cover damage from water or clergy mistaking bugs for Lucifer's handiwork.)
ambassador806/iStock/Getty Images
You're fired! Hahahaha- WAIT, NOT IN THE FACE!
In another, Swedish preachers similarly condemned the phone as hellspawn and people sabotaged telephone lines, fearing that they attracted evil spirits. Whether the demon spirits were supposedly communicating the messages -- somehow enslaved by the telephone -- or whether they were just seizing the opportunity to overhear who in Helsingborg made the best fiskbullar, I do not know. What I do know is, if you could work out the logic you'd have a tall, blond, alcohol-fueled prequel to The Ring.
424 Comments