At first, it's kinda fun. "Oh, look, my phone can play a Bach partita at me. No one else's phone will do that. I will stand out in an acoustic crowd; I will always know it's my phone; people will say to me, 'Hey, that's cool!'" Sure, you can have your phone play one of those built-in tunes ("Anticipation"? "Intrigue"? "Hurdy-gurdy"? Please.) But who wants that when your attention can be summoned by Beethoven, the Cure, or the Black-Eyed Peas? It's like having a signature scent; it's your signature sound.
As the technology becomes more sophisticated, so do the sonic signatures. Now you can be known by the 12-part invention your phone can play -- polyphony takes on a double meaning as you choose the most interesting and individual snippet of tunage to let you know that someone is calling you. "Oh, that's just something from a Mozart symphony." You know, as if Wolfgang dashed off a little something to make your phone a little less dull.
After a while, though, it gets annoying, even unpleasant. That song you loved so much becomes that noise that metaphorically tugs at your sleeve, saying, "Pay attention to meeeee!" No matter how much you love "Boys Don't Cry," that catchy lick will soon set you off like one of Pavlov's dogs.
Don't get me wrong -- I speak from experience. Once, I thought "Wuthering Heights" would make a fantastic ringtone. Now I think of the nightmares I'd have as the wailing banshee of the phone continued to pester me like, well, the ghost of Cathy. No, thank you.
It's a phone. Why not just let it sound like a phone? Ring. Ring-ring. Brrrrring. How hard is that? Honestly. Will you really, really not know that ringing is for you? Let your favorite tunes go back to being tunes. Don't consign more songs to the fate of Francisco Tarrega's Grand Valse -- now known forever as the Nokia Tune.
Posted on March 31, 2005 to horticulture
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