Cooper already made the first wireless phone call in April 1973 from the street in Manhattan. “At the very beginning, 50 years ago, when I invented the mobile phone and we actually built it and made calls with it, it was clear to me that one day everyone would have one. We joked that one day when you were born they would assign you a phone number. And once you don’t pick up the phone, it means you’re dead,” he says.
The vision of the mass spread of mobile phones has indeed come true. And thanks to the collapse of the bipolar world at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, the communication revolution spread almost unhindered across the entire planet. The only challenges were the development of technologies with a focus on the miniaturization and durability of phones and on reducing their acquisition and operating costs.
Martin Cooper is sure that his invention is far from the last word. He considers today’s way of telephoning to be unnatural. The visionary envisions devices conveniently attached to the body of the owner and eventually powered by his biological energy. He is not worried about excessive use, but about insufficient protection of personal data.
“My most negative opinion is that we no longer have any privacy. Everything about us today is recorded somewhere and is accessible to someone with a strong enough desire to get it. We have to learn to live with it. Our governments must decide what they must protect about us.”
