I

n an era when cell phones are so ubiquitous that for some they are like an extra appendage, some determined souls are proving that it is possible to get by without one.

Muara Bagdja, a fashion observer, has never had a cell phone. Not before, not now and perhaps not ever, he says.

"I don't want to be impractical by carrying around too much stuff," he says of his decision to live cell-free. "I have a bag, but it's already full with my wallet, notebooks and camera, so I don't want to have to bother with a cell phone too."

In most cases, people without cell phones are the old, the poor or the technophobic. But Muara clearly does not fit into any of these categories.

For Muara, having no cell phone is simply a lifestyle choice. "I don't just have the urge to own one," he says.

Living without the ubiquitous communications tool has not, however, forced him into a state of isolation - he has not had to cut down contact with his friends and business colleagues. People can still contact him through the fixed line phone in his office or send queries through his email.

Art curator Musa Jonatan, who also chooses not to have a cell phone, says his decision is because he is so forgetful. Every time he did get a cell phone, he'd lose it, and have to replace it; eventually, he says, enough was enough, and he decided to just go without.

Both Musa and Muara acknowledge that their friends and colleagues nag them to get a cell phone.

"However, having no cell phone does not affect my work performance because I work in my office all day until late at night," Musa says. "If I need to leave my office, I am usually accompanied by a colleague who owns a cell phone."

Muara reveals he has a similar strategy - being accompanied by a colleague duly equipped with a cell phone. However, he adds, at times he does feel guilty for using colleagues this way.

"When there is trouble on the road *getting to an appointment*, for example we are stuck in traffic or we can't find the meeting spot, I will ask my colleague who carries a cell phone to contact the client," he says. "I feel it bothers them, but then I figure it's occasional. It doesn't happen everyday."

Muara also feels that not having a cell phone does not negatively affect his work.

"People just have to contact me using the old ways. We have to have a fixed schedule if we meet outside my office," he says, chuckling

Once, he says, a meeting with a client fell through because the client mispronounced the name of the meeting place. Another time, he could not find his client, even though he had arrived at the designated place.

"But there is always a solution," he says. "I went to a public pay phone and called their cell phone."

Muara also finds that having no cell phone frees him from other stress, such as having to buy credit and keeping track of the phone.

"I see how panicked people get when they lose their cell phone or when they leave it at home," he says. "Well, I never have to experience anything like that."

However, since cell phones have become a central part of social life, Muara notes that he now misses out on some things now, such as greetings for public holidays.

"Most people now send greetings via text message," he says. "I still receive greeting cards or phone calls at my office from people who know that I don't have a cell phone, but I get a lot less now than before the cell phone era."

The idea of cell phones was conceived in the late 1940s. But it was former Motorola employee Dr. Martin Cooper who is credited with inventing the modern cell phone. In New York in April 1973 - almost 100 years since Alexander Graham Bell's first phone call - Cooper made the first call on a cell phone. He called his rival Joel Engel from Bell's Lab using Motorola Dyna TAC 8000X.

Well, we say "cell phone", which technically it was, but Cooper's handset had little resemblance to the shiny little pieces we use today. It weighed nearly a kilogram and was 30 centimeters long. It was so expensive, at a cost of almost US$4,000, that at first only businesses and the military had access. It took more than 10 years for cell phones to begin to trickle down to the public.

There were cell phones before Cooper's 1973 breakthrough, but they all required some sort of backpack or car-mounted unit to be used effectively. Cooper's was the first device that turned the "mobile" phone into something that was, actually, mobile.

By the mid-1980s, fully automated cellular networks meant the price and decreased slightly, and more people had phone in their cars. The car phone remained, however, more or less exclusive to the wealthy. It was not until the early to mid-1990s that cell phones became small enough and cheap enough to appeal to the average consumer.

Once the public had them in their hands, the industry - and the social revolution - took off.

In Indonesia, cell phones have become more than a communication tool; they have become an object of desire - especially the smart phones such as the BlackBerry and the iPhone - and a symbol of status.

While Musa and Muara claim they are cell-less for practical rather than philosophical reasons, Richard M. Stallman, activist and founder of the Free Software Foundation, decided to live without a cell phone to maintain his privacy.

"The cell phone of today can act like a computer because they are installed with proprietary software that can track people's whereabouts," he told The Jakarta Post during his recent visit to Indonesia. "So the cell phone can act as a tracking device. The system knows where you are. It can record wherever you go."

Stallman, an American who has been advocating the importance of free software since 1984, said he was so concerned about the widespread surveillance because he believed it was an integral part of what he describes as his government's horrible violence and injustice.

"The US government launched a war that killed millions. They put people in prisons without trial, which is a fundamental attack on human rights. They spy on the political opposition and use the information to sabotage democratic political activity," he said.

"This is dangerous, more dangerous than the terrorism that they are supposed to stop. People ignore this danger because they think about their immediate lives or because they don't know."

And so, he said, he doesn't have a cell phone.