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Nick O'Dwyer

Rebecca Arnold

The Life and Death of a Mobile Phone

Documentaries

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

05/10/2009

BBC Four - The Life and Death of a Mobile Phone

Examining the ways in which the mobile phone has made itself indispensable to modern life.

Documentary following the life cycle of a mobile phone, investigating the many ways in which this lump of plastic and minerals has made itself indispensable to modern life.

Through the life cycle of one mobile phone, this documentary investigates the million and one ways in which the mobile has made itself indispensable to modern life. 

One in every two human beings has a mobile, and this inanimate lump of plastic and minerals is made privy to people's innermost secrets - conversations with friends, lovers and family. It holds family photos, plays favourite music and yet, as an instrument of communication, it has its paradoxes. People are dumped by text, some pretend to be deep in a telephone conversation to avoid speaking to real people and others are affronted when their bellowed conversations on public transport are overheard. 

Then, at the end of a strangely intimate relationship, it becomes one of the one billion phones discarded every year - reconditioned for re-use or smelted down for the precious metals it contains.

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