Cellphone Access Has Skyrocketed. The World Is Better for It: New at Reason

In the 1987 movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko, an immensely wealthy investor played by Michael Douglas, is shown talking on his Motorola DynaTac 8000x cellphone. When that device debuted in 1983, it was the world’s fist handheld mobile phone. It weighted two pounds and cost $3,995 ($9,835 in today’s money).

The takeaway from the scene was simple: Gekko was rich and powerful. You, the viewer, were neither. In 1989, just 1.4 percent of Americans possessed a cellphone.

Today, there are mobile devices in the United States than Americans, writes Marian Tupy in the October print edition of Reason.

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