Mobile Phones: Text

Mobile Phones: Text


'Switch it off before you drive off' - an urgent message for drivers from the dawn of the mobile phone era.

Public information films have been trying to teach us how to stay safe on the roads for decades. By the end of the 20th century, most drivers were well aware of the risks of drink driving, not wearing a seatbelt or failing to look out for cyclists. But new technology meant new perils, and in the early years of the 21st century the rapid spread of mobile phones was changing our behaviour in unexpected ways - including on the road.

This 30-second 'filler' smartly (and cheaply!) uses a mix of overlapping audio and parallel text on screen to convey the simple message that 'it's hard to concentrate on two things at once'. It's an effective device, and the slogan, 'missing a call won't kill you', is a powerful one. But the national addiction to handheld devices is still with us. Nearly two decades on under the same 'Think!' banner came a new education drive, 'Mobiles 2022', with the message 'Hands on the wheel? Hands off your phone.'

Filler reminding public not to use mobile phone while driving.


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That Was the Future

Their future, our now: explore how earlier generations imagined the world we're living in today.
For anyone living in the later years of the 20th century, it felt like the future was arriving unusually fast. As computers, once huge behemoths that filled rooms, began to shrink to desktop size, they quickly spread into every arena of society, spreading out from university labs and industry giants to ordinary offices, schools and into the home. Meanwhile astonishing advances in robotics, genetics, materials, transport and entertainment all offered glimpses of a brave new world. Just trying to keep up with this revolution was dizzying, never mind making sense of it. What did it all mean? What did the future hold - for our work, our leisure, our health, our food, our relationships? How would technology change us as people? Would it be the kind of future we'd want? Nobody could say for sure, but there were plenty of people willing to speculate. And now that their future is our present, it's fascinating to look back and judge for ourselves how right - or how wrong - they were.

19 videos in this collection

1

IT82: General Introduction

2

IT82: The Office

3

IT82: The Home

4

Prostheses

5

Smart Living @ Home with Technology

6

Sinclair C5 Cycle / Car Launched

'Switch it off before you drive off' - an urgent message for drivers from the dawn of the mobile phone era.
7

Mobile Phones: Text

8

Appeal For Computer Game Programmers

9

Digital World

10

Scientists Growing Skin Artificially

11

Talk Teletext

12

Introduction to Computers

13

Modernising the Underground

14

Photon Connection

15

Mensa Symposium Predicts Future

16

Computers for Share Dealing

17

Ford Working On Tomorrow's Car

18

Police Try Out Their New Hoolivan

19

Britain in the Year 2000

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