Cell Phones in the Online Video Age

Cell phone technology is truly remarkable. In fact, most cell phones are now personal data organizers, whether it is used to manage a person’s schedule, MP3s, videos and… oh yeah, phone numbers. Like a PDAs, many can now access the Internet with a press of a button, send emails and search websites. The Blackberry paved way for such a powerful communication tool but anticipation is in full swing for the upcoming iPhone from Apple.

Besides headlining business and technology sections of newspapers all across the world, cell phones and cell phone technology has been in thick controversy as of late. In Denver, Colorado students at Castle Rock Middle School used cell phone cameras to take photos and videos of their naked bodies, which were then spread to other students and posted online. A video (below) released by USA Today shows a man attacking store guards with a knife in a Los Angeles grocery store on March 6, 2007. Four people were wounded in the attack.

Capturing Death with a Camera phone

I posted the video below of a man being struck and killed by a falling pole earlier this week. It was captured using a cell phone in the streets of Egypt. In 2003, according to the United States National Safety Council, the odds of being killed by a striking object are 1 in 4,633. This man was the unlucky 1.




Death strikes people in many ways. Accidental deaths are unique in that people are not used to seeing people die on a frequent basis by various occurrences. However, this is changing with widely available and searchable video on the Internet. Curiosity may urge someone to click on the video and watch it, even if they feel as if they should not.

On March 12, 2007, according to an article on Tasmania’s online newspaper Mercury, an Indonesian woman filmed the poisoning of her own children on her camera phone, and then committed suicide. She left behind a note saying she was taking them “to see heaven”. This news is quite disturbing and raises questions. Why kill your children? And why film your children dying? Hopefully this video is destroyed and never seen.

Saddam Hussein Execution

The recent execution of Saddam Hussein brought forward the popular cell phone video (see below) captured by an official witnessing the execution.

This video initiated many incidents that involved children trying to imitate the execution video as it played out on the television and computer screens before their eyes. Mubashar Ali, a 9-year-old boy from Pakistan hung himself from a ceiling fan, while Sergio Pelico, 10, from Webster, Texas died after tying a noose around his neck with the rope attached to the top bunk of his bunk bed. These are two copycat instances that include many more where the children were mimicking the images they saw.

A video from a cellular camera had enough exposure to convince, or shall I say trick, these children into ending their own lives. All this permeating from a nation with a culture reliant on cell phones and not Internet access.

Texuality.org has a sub-site news blog on video phoning called picturephoning.com. This site provides links and content to all kinds of news about cell phone culture. It is from here that I learned the Iraqi population’s dependence on cell phones. On January 3, 2007 the BBC posted an article about the culture of cell phones in Iraq

Iraq is a country with 0.1% access to the web, but has full access to cell phones. According to the BBC article:

The day after Saddam Hussein execution video was released, a trader in Baghdad was selling the footage for less than 50 cents US. Other merchants had the video copied on DVDs, which was available to the public.

This triumphant moment of faith and unity for many Shiites in Iraq was not only the cause of many children dying around the world, but also the reason the owner of a corner mobile phone store in Iraq earned a few dinars. Even the little man will take the opportunity to profit off the execution of an evil tyrant.