cell phones are taking over the earth

So you know how when you hear something new all of a sudden you start hearing it and seeing it everywhere.  Well that has happened to me in the past few months in a serious way and its making me a little nutty and quite frankly a little disturbed. 

Some background:  Neither Brandon nor I are big cell phone (or technology people)...if you could see how scratched and beat up our laptops, camera, and itouch are...I imagine some people would be apalled. But we're just not into having the latest gadgets, nor do we have a use for them...I would venture to say that out of our family we have the most boring cell phones and I know I text the absolute least than anyone I know (sorry to all my friends who never get text responses!)

So, back in April, around Earth day, I made a visit to the No Impact Man Blog to check out to see what he would be doing for Earth day.  If you dont' know about No Impact Man, you should google him and his documentary.  Aaanyway, he had posted a blog about "Progress."  He was asked to speak to a group about true progress and made this super insightful speech on the fact that we have the greatest minds in our country working together to build the best...........cell phones each year.  Is it true progress when each year we have the next best cell phone available?  The cell phones available now were better than last year's and we know next year the cell phones will be even "better"...so does that constitute progress if each year we have the same product just a little "better"?

Here's the full post; it might be worth reading to fully understand my bitterness:
http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2010/03/progress.html

So now that I have that statement in my mind, I can't stop being a little ticked about all the insane cell phone commercials on tv.  The one that makes me the most crazy is the one that starts out with a wheel that dominoes into a phonograph, into an electric lightbulb, a car, a space shuttle, etc, etc, into finally a PHONE!?  Are you kidding me?  Really a space shuttle is less of an advancement to mankind than a cell phone?!?!  It's outrageous...but also kind of true.  How is it that we have cell phones now that you can ask to find you an ice cream parlor in the middle of the desert, but we don't have a cure (or even a definite cause determined) for Autism...?  Wouldn't it benefit our country & the Earth to have our brightest minds working on renewable energy sources..?  We have cell phones that can extract all of the reasons we have the word "human" in our cell phone but there are people all over the world that don't have access to clean drinking water..?!!  Why search for the word "human" in your phone when we ignore the needs of humans around us?  Seems a little unbalanced and quite frankly INSANE to me.

So its not my way to leave a blog so bitter and hateful.  So what can we do about it?  Well, since I am kind of apathetic about the newest gizmos in technology (that's how out I am...I call them gizmos), I don't know that I have much leverage in halting the latest trends in cell creation...but I know that most of my family & friends purchase new phones every year or two; so here's some ideas of what you can do with your old cell phone(s) to balance karma:)

Donate your cell phone to help purchase free calling card minutes for soldiers abroad:  http://www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com/index.html

Donate your cell to help provide emergency phones for the elderly, disabled, & battered women shelters:  http://www.cellphonesforlife.org/

For every phone donated, they send a contribution to the charity of your choice:  http://www.charitablerecycling.com/CR/home.asp

Donate your cell, itouch, laptops, & cameras!  (they'll also contribute to the charity of your choice):  http://www.recyclingforcharities.com/index.php

Send in your cell and YOU get cash back (doesn't do much for your karma, heh):  http://www.cellforcash.com/