Here I am, one of 3 billion phones in the world.
You and your fellow Brits clocked up 99 billion minutes of chat last year.
I've changed the way you talk.
I was talking even louder, you know, "I'm talking now, I'm on a mobile!"
And who you talk to.
I looked at the screen and I actually said out loud,
"You can get knotted, I don't want to talk to you today."
I can be a dangerous friend.
I've actually learned to really despise the mobile phone.
That destroyed me, destruction through a mobile phone.
I share your every secret, 24/7.
If it's on charge it's on, if it's off charge, it's still on.
It's never off.
Then, after all that, you go and ditch me.
I can't believe you've done this to me.
You've dumped me and here I am, running down my battery on a grubby floor...
in Belgium, for Christ's sake.
We used to be so close, you and me.
I was your constant companion, your confidante,
your right-hand man.
Do you remember how we met?
I watched you walk into the shop and I knew you were mine.
I was sleek and silver, smooth to the touch.
You cradled me to your cheek.
We were made for each other.
Each mobile phone is unique.
Each mobile phone is like an old pair of shoes moulded to your preferences.
It's yours. What you use it for, how you use it, is exactly up to you.
I never move without my mobile phone.
I keep it just here, next to my heart. I love my mobile phone.
I always have pink mobile phones.
Well, this particular phone comes in two parts, I believe, now.
PHONE BEEPS
Oh, this is typical.
This phone is very sleek.
It's lovely. It's comfortable against the ear.
It's got the best ring tones, best games.
Another message.
Text messaging, that's another that nightmare of mine.
I couldn't think of a better phone.
Things used to be a bit more clumpy and dumpy between your kind and mine.
But we worked hard.
We lost ever more weight to make you love us more.
Well, the earliest phones were transportable phones,
which essentially was a giant car battery
with almost a car-phone-type handset on top and most of the time
you plugged them in the car and watched the headlights dim when you switched them on to charge.
In 1983, in the USA, they released the Motorola Dynatac phone,
which cost ¤3,995
and the phone had shrunk
in terms of the size and the technology involved in making it,
to mean it was the first truly hand-held portable phone.
Flip-top phones started first of all in the very late 80s.
They designed the flip mouthpiece.
An interesting thing about this phone is that they give you the impression
there's some sort of microphone electronics within the flip that actually work,
but in fact the microphone was fitted down here near the hinge,
so the flip doesn't actually really do anything at all.
The aerial in these early Motorola flip phones also was for show.
They were dummies. They didn't do anything.
They were fitted to the phones
due to the results of early American focus groups,
who decided that all telephones should have a big aerial,
like a walkie-talkie.
30 years ago we didn't exist.
Now there's one of us for every two of you.
And every year another billion bright, shiny newcomers.
We connect 4 billion people worldwide.
The blank space is squeezed out so you can be in constant touch.
I never turn my mobile phone off and indeed the studies we have done show
that by far most people never turn their mobile phone off, not even when they have sex.
Really?Yeah. They put it on silent but they never turn it off.
I don't think there's anywhere I don't go without my phone.
Nowhere, the toilet, everywhere.
When I don't have my phone I have to steal my friend's phone and hold it as if I have it.
In some way it's become a control piece,
you know, "You didn't answer your phone."
It's an accusation, you know.
"If you'd answered your phone you'd have known what I was going to do."
I put it on silent when I go to bed.
I put it on silent.
Why don't you turn it off? Because somebody might ring me!
We give you ubiquity.
We give you constant availability, all that sheer din of chatter.
But we end up here, at the industrial end of Belgium.
Welcome to Belgium.
Welcome to Umicore,
where we're recycling 5 million cellphones per year.
Well, we're now sitting here at the pile
of about 100,000 shredded cellphones.
Cellphones that have been collected by a supplier of ours
and transported from another continent to Belgium.
This pile of 100,000 shredded cellphones contains 20 kilograms of silver,
one kilogram of palladium and around 400 kilograms of copper.
Was that all I was to you?
E-junk to be shredded and melted down?
Did you know you held a whole world in your hand?
Nickel from Chile,
silver from Argentina,
palladium from Siberia?
But you never knew anything about me, did you?
But I knew you.
Intimately.
I was always there.
Master of the bedchamber.
I was the custodian of all your secrets.
I entrusted those in favour to speed dial.
Together we were text addicts.
You Brits, really,
anything to avoid a conversation.
We're in the texting country of the world.
We're one of the countries in the world, at least in the ones we've studied,
that has an extreme large amount of texts compared to voice.
People send texts because it's a cop-out from having a conversation.
The art of conversation is dead.
They talk about 4 billion texts a year being sent around the UK.
4505 messages
in the last month and a half.
I don't like ringing my friends even. I'm very kind of, I don't know, and I think it's the thought that
I don't want to disturb them, or am I going to disturb them in the middle of something, so I just... I don't.
I send them a nice little text message and then they can text me back or if they ring me that's fine!
I'm going to get arthritis when I'm older in my thumb, definitely. That's a definite.
Then the oldest story.
Girl meets boy.
Girl and boy swap numbers.
Things move on in an agreeable sort of way.
And then, indecently early the next day, the eager text.
The inevitable postscript.
If someone says, "I love you," with one X, you know that if you're together by the end of the month
there should be more than one X on it and I've noticed it progresses as time goes on.
You get more Xs and as you're together three or four months, it can just go back to one or two.
If you're used to receiving one or two Xs, if there's one less
or none at all then yeah, absolutely, what does that mean.
You're on the phone straight away.
What have you done?
I've got a habit of sending two Xs whether I love them or not, if they're friends, I do that,
and I feel a bit guilty if I get four or five.
I think, oh, I'd better add a few more.
Once you'd met him things started to change between us.
From then on you were preoccupied and I was merely a go-between,
a gooseberry.
While you made a fool of yourself.
But love is blind and you were heedless to the looks you were getting.
On and on you droned.
When people talk to other people,
if they don't hold eye-contact with other people,
they tend to feel that nobody else is aware of what they're doing.
It's like when you're a bit drunk and you get that tunnel vision thing and you're chatting to your mate,
you're chatting in the pub and as far as you're concerned it's just you and them,
but suddenly you're talking louder and louder as you get drunker and drunker
and everybody else becomes aware of what you're saying and you think you're just talking to them.
One of the ideas that's been put forward is that the reason we're so annoyed
with people talking on the phone in a public space is because we only hear half of the conversation.
If we heard both sides we'd be very keen.
It's because we get annoyed and we have to sit and guess what they're talking about.
There's got to be different categories of mobile phone users.
You've got the show off.
You've got the, "Oh, look, I am Ted from Washington and I've got a huge schooner in the bay."
You've got that sort of fellow.
I think they become oblivious to it.
They switch off to the outside world.
Actually talking to people down the phone giving bank details and dates of birth, and you're thinking,
do you realise what you've just done in public, given all that information about you?
Then you've got the, "Darling, I love you!"
SHE WHISPERS "Last night..."
In Russia there was a guy telling his mate about the size of this woman's
boobies and what a goer she was,
and I looked up at him and he went, "I'll call you back."
"That bloke I went out with last night, did you hear about him? Yeah, he ain't that good!"
And you think, do you really have to talk about it!
And you've got the practical, "I'll be home at 5 o'clock, make sure you put the meat in."
The thing is about you English, you listen to so much
and merely tut tut,
but after a while you'll finally boil over.
He'd ring his wife and give her an update on which station we were in.
Now, I didn't mind the first three,
but after eleven I was, like the rest of the passengers,
somewhat frustrated and bemused and can only hope that his wife was hard of hearing, or deaf, actually.
To cut a long story short,
he would stop and we'd be in places such as Three Bridges and he'd say,
"Hello, darling, it's me.
"I shall probably be there about half past seven,
"but I might be a bit late.
"There's quite a lot of passengers getting on this train.
"I've counted 15, to date.
"But there could be a few more, I don't know."
I got on the bus and I quickly phoned work and I was saying,
"Can I speak to so-and-so, I need to get through to them."
While they put me through, I had a tap on my shoulder
by this man who was late 50s, 60s, and he said,
"Turn that phone off and don't be so rude on the bus!"
Anyway, the waiter came past with the drinks trolley.
I said, "Can I have a small bottle of brandy, please,
"because that guy is going to drive me nuts in a minute."
I just was so angry. But I told him with a few words where to go,
and I said, "Oh, I've got to get off this phone a minute."
I got off the phone and I thought, I'm not having it.
I'm going to phone back because I need to.
As I was standing to get off this man was glaring at me like that.
And I don't know, I can't swear, so it's not going to sound the same,
but I was on the phone, in my ear and he just said,
"Thanks for effing enlightening us, you effing B,"
and Michael goes, "What's that?" I goes, "Call me back,"
and I put the phone down and he goes, "Yes, you, you effing B,"
and he really didn't abbreviate.
He was just, he looked mad and he just said, "I'm going to slit your...throat, you know."
And I don't know what happened then because I suddenly went,
"Oh, shut up!"
And then he ran off and I ran off because then I really got scared
because I think that was just a reaction.
I had to say something and I said, "Look,
"I don't know why you had to say what you said
"every single station we stopped at, but why don't you just say to your wife, I'll be there at 8.30?"
He said, "Well, it's her birthday, I've got to take her to dinner, blah blah blah, we've booked a table."
I said, "Fine, but why did you have to actually say after every station
"where we were?
"And why did you have to mention the passengers
"and why did you have to announce the delays on the train?"
It's just driving me nuts.
Anyway I did phone back. I was going, I'm just looking for this man who doesn't want me to speak on my phone!
I was looking at the back of the bus and I was talking even louder, "I'm talking now, on my mobile!"
You put me through all that and then you consign me to scrap at the biggest, hottest smelter in Europe.
In our time together I gave you 1,500 hours of chat.
I sent 73,000 texts for you.
And I end up here, in 2,000 degrees of heat to be plundered for profit.
My metals skimmed off a red hot soup.
What's in those buckets behind us?
Well, in the buckets behind us you can find lead, aluminium, iron, silica, zinc and so on.
I had even more valuable ingredients you never suspected.
Well, the precious metals can mainly be found on the circuit board and in the connectors.
They increase connectivity and they can resist rust corrosion.
Me, I was laced with precious metal, sparkling in a precise instrument.
You and your kind, you're blunt, pink, soft, clumsy.
You infect everything with your virus of human error.
You press the wrong buttons, you fire off hot, ill-judged words.
Everything was tickety boo for you until that night.
Then...
so what if he'd had a couple of drinks and mis-sent the text which ended up by your bedside?
So what if it showed he was still in touch with his ex?
Still sending her smoochy texts at 1am.
And so began the long night of doubt.
But you weren't the first to feel the dark side of texting.
You do it and you see the name. You go, no, I don't want to send it to that person
but there's no way of stopping it! It just says "sending" and you can't get it back.
I have arguments via text message because I'm not a very aggressive person, I'm very passive.
I don't like having arguments.
If somebody does something to annoy me I'll quite often send a text message and say exactly how I feel.
I was seeing a guy and we finished and I was very upset for about two years really
and I know when I went out one night, I was in Bagleys, at 3 o'clock in the morning, dancing.
I went into the toilet and I was texting him saying,
I know we haven't spoken for a while but I still love you.
I don't know what's happened between us but I think we should still be friends or whatever,
and nothing's happened, no response.
It's three in the morning, he might be asleep, but I'm not thinking that.
Then afterwards, it's how dare you ignore me?
I can't believe you're ignoring me!
You have all this front to do it.
If I'd rung them I'd have chickened out.
I'd have just gone, yeah, yeah, it's all right, I don't mind, it's fine.
But I know that if I'm really annoyed I should tell them, so I told them in a text message.
It's an amplifier so if you have a very intimate and trusting relationship then you can amplify it.
If you're on the verge of...
suicide or divorce or breaking up, then I think it could also amplify that, because of course the problem
with these 160 characters or less is that they don't tell the whole story and even sometimes they can
tell a story between the lines that might not even be there.
With that text the doubt was sown, wasn't it?
What was bright and silvery became dark and ominous.
Who's in touch with who, where, and when.
Constantly available, constantly in touch.
You had to know, didn't you?
So I wasn't wholly surprised when you crossed that line to delve into
the secret world of someone else's phone.
Typical boys' toy. Loads of features, all fur coat
and no knickers, and there, in the photos, you see her.
Picture taken the wrong side of midnight.
I have to say that this is the one and only time I actually went through anybody's phone
and again he was somebody else who always had his phone with him so it was quite hard to do that.
But on this one particular occasion he left his phone behind
while he was off walking the dog, so I did have a look through.
I looked through the messages and I couldn't see incriminating evidence, but in his templates,
being the creature of habit that he was, there was the template to me which said
"Goodnight gorgeous", but there was another one in there which was "Goodnight beautiful",
which of course he'd never send to me because he never ever called me that, he always called me gorgeous,
so I guessed that template was going across to the woman across the road.
I got the impression she had met someone from the way she was speaking so sneakily
I went and had a look at her mobile phone on the off chance
and I spotted quite a graphic text message from him...
to her. I mean this continued over
the space of about three months, that I was checking her phone,
just reading some of the texts that were on there and the whole time feeling quite guilty about it.
I've looked at the number and I've thought,
"I don't know this." So just out of curiosity, I sent a text message.
I had a feeling that this was not right, but I thought, "I'm going to be calm."
I remember shaking so much that I had to hold the phone with two hands
to send this text message which said, "Hi, how are you?"
And the reply came back, "Oh, hello, not heard from you for a while."
And then I said, "OK, calm, deal with this."
"Would you like to come for dinner", I text. And again, I'm having to hold my arms on the worktop.
And the reply came back, "Oh, yes, please, I'd love to come to dinner.
That would be great. How about Thursday?"
It's Tuesday. "You're a bit quick, aren't you?"
So finally, to really make sure, I then text, "Would you like a cuddle?"
And it came back "Oh, yes please. Hugsy." Hugsy!
I just sort of felt there was such a guilt about invading someone's privacy, looking at their phone.
I sort of thought, "If I tell her what I know, it makes me look bad.
"It makes me look like... I mean, I have been reading her texts, I have been going through her things."
So I didn't like that aspect at all, so the guilt just kept me quiet, if anything.
And what had he said to the woman?
Oh, it's wonderful. It's a wonderful romance.
He told her he was a water gypsy and lived on his boat!
So you wait and you wonder,
and you fume and you fret,
and you pace and you postpone.
But the pressure inside your head means there comes a time when you make the call...
..when you confront.
I told her then that I'd been checking her phone for three months.
Yeah, that was a shock. What did she say?
I mean, immediately she admitted what had gone on.
She said it was over. So...
I won't go into all the details, but we talked it over.
It was quite tough, emotionally.
I did take about four days to pluck up courage to confront him with it, mostly because I thought he'd
be quite affronted that had gone through his mobile phone. But, no, he was caught, well and truly caught.
So that was the end of that relationship.
I served him his dinner, gave him a drink and I just said very quietly, "Now, listen to me."
"I'm going to tell you this and I'm not going to repeat myself,
"but if you ever do anything like this again
"I'm not going to come for you, I'm going to go after the woman.
"And anything that happens to the woman
"is going to be your responsibility."
And then I just left it.
Now, I would not have touched another woman.
I would probably just have kneed him next time and thrown him out.
But the point was it scared him enough
to behavefor another three years.
And then he went off with someone else!
Then about a month later, after this had all come out,
call it habit, I don't know what,
I thought, "Things just aren't quite right."
And I checked her phone again and the texts had been continuing.
How many men are sneaking off to the bathroom
at midnight and just, you know, texting quietly to somebody afar?
In terms of infidelity, the mobile phone, of course,
can equally play the role of enabling you, by having a spare phone,
to lead a double life much more effectively.
At the same time, if that phone is found,
then it is a gigantic hair on your lapel.
Obviously, because there is a story.
You can see all the messages.
In our studies we have found that on several occasions people have been caught out.
Of course, instead of hiring a private detective, you just go and read the text messages.
I could have told you the phone isn't the best way to have these conversations.
I was just a go-between, but it was me you cast aside,
to begin my strange and lonely last journey.
You hurled me into a watery oblivion.
You know I don't swim.
Me and water just don't mix, but you abandoned me,
leaving me to sleep with the fishes.
Here I came, still dripping, to an alleyway off Holborn,
a knacker's yard of phones rejected, ill-used and battered.
We get 70,000 to 80,000 a month at the moment
but that's building up quite quickly,
so we'd anticipate by the end of the year
getting 90,000 to 100,000 each month.
MOBILE ALARMS RING
You were heedless and far away.
In my distress, and with my last breaths, I tried calling out to you.
We get 200 or 300 alarms going off each day, and it can get very annoying, obviously,
because they're going off every day and they might be buried at the bottom of a box.
So we spend a fair amount of time scrabbling around trying to find these alarms.
About 80%, we try and resell to markets all over the world,
predominantly Africa, south-east Asia, places like that.
But the phones that we can't resell, which amount to about 10 to 15%,
if it's smashed up, we get quite a few that have been bitten by dogs
and carried around, a lot of water-damaged stuff.
So ultimately, yeah, they will be recycled and taken apart and the bits recovered.
Water-damaged stuff, my arse.
Shunted here, shivering and in need of warmth.
I found it here,
in the fiery crucible where my last secrets could be liberated.
Hot tears I'd wept for you and our lost life together.
Bitter tears, too, for the way you cast me aside as junk,
when I was worth so much more,
because I was golden.
How many mobile phones to make that amount of gold?
500 tons of mobile phones.
How much gold is there? What is it worth?
This is 150 kilograms.
In value, you're talking about the value of about £3.5 million sterling.
We are mining, we are recovering what has already been mined in the past,
and we are putting it back on the market.
Quite often this gold will be used again to produce mobile phones.
And so I have become eternal,
alchemised on and on, in an ever vaster merry-go-round of mobiles.
I've changed you and the way you live forever, endless connectivity.
For me, it's just dot-to-dot.
For you,
it's a global mobile monster, eating up your time on this earth.
It sort of nibbles away at our attention.
All the constant e-mail, instant messaging, text messages, mobile phone calls,
suddenly we have no attention left to ourselves and we have no time to just chill out and be quiet.
And I think that is the discussion we are undergoing.
There is a sort of niceness to not being contacted,
to sort of be out of the reach of other people and just have a bit of space and time to yourself.
Now they've created it, it's like a monster you can't get rid of.
Everyone has to have one now.
I think it's an enemy.
I do feel as though...
..it's just such an intrusion.
Can you imagine giving an exercise to everybody, no mobile phones for seven days and seven nights?
You know,
a lot of people would just implode.
# Well, I can't live without you
# I need you night and day
# But sometimes, phone, I hate you
# And the things you say
# Ba-da-ba, ba, ba-da-ba
# Baba-da-ba, ba, ba-da
# Ba-da-ba, ba,ba-da-ba
# Ba ba-da-ba ba ba
# Life and death of the mobile-phone. #
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd