Friday, November 07, 2008

Design Porn- The Dior Mobile


In previous posts, I've referred to the cell phone as a machine designed to turn people into rude assholes in public places, and an answer to our subconscious fears that the telephone, if left home alone, will answer itself and insult its callers. I've also compared them to the ''leprous distillment'' that Claudius pours into the ear of Hamlet's sleeping father.


So, clearly, I'm not going to buy a cell phone any time soon. But, as Jonathan Richman puts it, ''You can have a cell phone if you want, but not me.'' Maybe people really do need them. Perhaps people have close, personal relationships with their telephones and simply cannot stand to be separated from them. One could ask if the telephone feels the same way, or if this is a one-sided relationship. But, who are we to judge? Love is strange.
Anyway, it's nice to see that some sort of design is now going into these things, so that they'll be pleasant to look at while the idiot in front of you in the grocery store checkout line blithely discusses her herpes with her best friend. I like the look of the new Dior Mobile, which could be called the Cadillac of Cell Phones, if only because all the rest of them are shockingly ugly. I'm not going to argue that it's gorgeous, nor that it's worth the ludicrous 5,000 clams that they're asking for it; but I would say that it makes the other cell phones on the market look like they're made of cardboard by comparison.
So, hopefully, it will launch a trend. And cell phone addicts are nothing if not trendy.

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