Shashi Tharoor Shares 1919 Cartoon, Leaves Internet Amazed

The cartoon is titled, “The pocket telephone: When it will ring!” It depicts different instances in a person’s life when a mobile phone would ring.

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor took to his social media handle to share a picture of an old 1919 cartoon predicting how technology would impact human lives in the coming years. Interestingly, it resembles where we as humans have reached with technological advancements and its deep impacts on our lives.

The cartoon has been titled, “The pocket telephone: When it will ring!” It depicts different instances in a person’s life when a mobile phone would ring. Initially, it shows a man running to board a train and the mobile phone rings. Another illustration shows a man struggling to pick up the phone as his hands are full. A third illustration focuses on the person struggling to speak on the phone while it’s pouring heavily while another shows the phone ringing while he is sitting in a concert and everyone around him is telling him to keep it low. The next two parts exhibit that the phone rings while he is getting married and the phone rings when he is about to hold a newborn baby. The annoyed woman in the cartoon says, “That bell is frightening the poor mite.”

“The latest modern horror in the way of inventions is supposed to be the pocket telephone. We can imagine the moments this instrument will choose for action! (By W K Haselden),” reads the caption of the cartoon towards the end of the illustration. Sharing the same, Mr Tharoor, wrote, “Scarcely believable, but predictions about technology (usually wide off the mark) sometimes were eerily prescient. See this 1919 cartoon, when fixed-line telephones were still rare, which anticipated the mobile phone & the nuisance it could turn out to be 80 years later!”

Scarcely believable, but predictions about technology (usually wide off the mark) sometimes were eerily prescient. See this 1919 cartoon, when fixed-line telephones were still rare, which anticipated the mobile phone & the nuisance it could turn out to be 80 years later! pic.twitter.com/FlLaJ5ZKgk

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) November 19, 2022

Since being shared, the post has amassed 728 likes and 128 retweets. Many internet users were left baffled looking at the cartoonist’s foresight. 

One user commented, “This is so real..! Well ahead of its times..”

“Well so true sir that it wasn’t even ever thought by people today,The boon at the cost of bane,” said another user.

A third person said, “This is absolutely a GEM of a cartoon. The artist could anticipate an entire Century”