The only thing that was in my mind when we made that first phone call was, 'Is it going to work?' We had all these parts hand soldered together, engineers standing by with the soldering iron - just in case.
Martin CooperRead
When you are doing one thing - talking on your phone, texting, whatever - you are automatically not doing something else. What is the greatest scarcity in the world today? It's not oil. It's time. Time is precious. Don't throw it away.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the preciousness of time and the importance of being mindful of how we use it.
Martin Cooper emphasizes the value of time over material resources like oil, suggesting that in our modern, distracted lives, we often neglect what truly matters. The distractions from technology and multitasking can lead us to waste our most finite resource—time—so we should be conscious of how we allocate it.
Themes
TimePreciousWisdomDistractionMindfulness
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about productivity, one might quote this to illustrate the need for focus.
More from Martin Cooper
All quotes →People are mobile. They move around, and anytime they want to communicate, if you tie them to the wall or the wires, you're restricting them, you're infringing on their freedom.
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As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren't cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones. I made numerous calls, including one where I crossed the street while talking to a New York radio reporter - probably one of the more dangerous things I have ever done in my life.
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Somehow in the last 100 years, every time there is a problem of getting more spectrum, there is a technology that comes along that solves that problem.
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It pleases me no end to have had some small impact on people's lives because these phones do make people's lives better. They promote productivity, they make people more comfortable, they make them feel safe and all of those things.
Martin CooperRead
We did envision that some day the phone would be so small that you could hang it on your ear or even have it embedded under your skin.
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