The American engineer who invented the world’s first handheld mobile phone half a century ago thinks we’re persistently glued to our phone screens.
In an interview with the Agence France-Presse, Martin Cooper believes people are addicted to their mobile phones. He shares how he would feel devastated every time a person absentmindedly crosses the street while distracted on their smartphone, a tool that he thinks has “boundless potential” that is wasted on mundane activities.
In 1973, Cooper and his team at Motorola created and unveiled the Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage phone, or DynaTAC for short. Though it weighed more than a kilogram and only had a 25-minute battery life, this breakthrough is what paved the way for smartphones of the modern day.
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Martin Cooper is a smartphone user himself. He owns a high-end iPhone model, with an accompanying Apple Watch to boot, although the 94-year-old says he feels overwhelmed by the millions of apps that can be downloaded from the app store.
But it’s not all doom and gloom for Cooper. He still believes in the potential of mobile phones, though that depends on the discipline and focus of the users. According to Cooper, smartphones could help solve world problems, such as finding cures for diseases, if mobile users put their heads together and use their smartphones beyond entertainment and social media.