The Fascism of the Literal

Yesterday we got our two new Motorola Razr cellphones from Radio Shack. Our contract is with Cingular, but the deal for the hardware was much better than that offered by by Cingular, either online or in their bricks-and-mortar store in our neighborhood.

Will we live happily ever after with our new cellphones, or at least for the two years of our contractual obligation?

We'll see. Cellphone companies are the e coli of American commerce, pervasive, often unsettling, occasionally deadly.

But that's not why I asked you here today. What is a cellphone without an elaborate set of instructions? The first instruction is that you should charge the phone for 24 hours before using it. And I think to myself: What actually is the optimum time to charge before using?

It's not 24 hours -- I'm sure of that.

Maybe it's 17 hours, 24 minutes. Maybe it's 26 hours, 47 minutes. But that degree of fineness would produce cognitive overload, and there would be less compliance, not more. And more batteries would fail prematurely, and more consumers would be sad.

Of course, sad consumers are not the issue. The issue is consumers sad enough to behave in ways -- loud and long complaints requiring more operators standing by; animosity that changes consumer buying habits -- that are incompatible with the company's profit expectations. Anyway, no matter whether the calculation is practical, altruistic or deeply cynical, the cellphone people know they need to stipulate a nice round number that resolves itself into: "Start now; tomorrow at this time, stop."

I know -- I know -- that a 24-hour charging period is a useful compromise with what is actually the "best" number.

All that stipulated, today somewhere between 23 hours, 50 minutes, and 24 hours, 10 minutes, after I began, I will quit charging our two brand-new blue Motorola Razr phones.