The Jetsons premiered on TV when I was 8…

JETSON THEME MUSIC CLIP

Even as an 8-year-old, I knew the Jetsons vision of the future - with instant push-button everything -- was unrealistic and goofy and truly cartoony. And the father, George Jetson, was a jerk -Homer Simpson without any of Homer’s charm.

JETSONS DIALOGUE CLIP w/ George

But I was a child who religiously watched the launch of every space shot, and was intensely eager to start using video-phones and flying around with my own rocket-pack as soon as possible. And so ever since, whenever some amazing new technology appeared - video games, video recorders, fax machines, personal computers, now robot lawnmowers and Tivo - I always think: hey, life really IS becoming like the Jetsons.

Take cell phones. Amazing and for most of us now indispensable gadgets.

No doubt you were as amused and/or annoyed as everyone else when cell phones began playing little tunes for rings….

CLIP: old-school non-polyphonic ringtones
During the last couple of years, new cell phones have been upgraded to be polyphonic, meaning they can play different notes and chords simultaneously…so that the funny sounds coming out of people’s phones are starting to sound like…music....

CLIP: 4-tone polyphonic ringtone song

And state of the art phones can now reproduce the sounds of 175 different instruments…

CLIP: 24-tone polyphonic ringtone song

Of course, a billion-dollar branch of show business has arisen around this technology.

You can buy and a few bars of any one of thousands of pop and classical songs, download the tunes into your cell phone for a couple of dollars apiece and that becomes your ring.

But now a German pop band has taken the next completely crazy leap into the absurd Jetsons future: the band Super Smart has released their new 8-song album entirely and exclusively AS ringtones. In other words, fans can’t buy a CD at all -they can ONLY get and listen to the album called Panda Babies through a cell phone.

CLIP: Panda Babies, "I Like Your Records"

And the music video for the first single from the Super Smart’s album, called "I Like Your Records," is ALSO designed to be downloaded and watched…on a cell phone screen.

Tell me THAT isn't exactly like an unbelievable gag on the Jetsons circa 1962.

But that isn’t the most freakish and improbable funneling of art through a cell phone.

That is in Japan, where an author with the nom de plume Yoshi published a novel called Deep Love, targeting teenage girls and sliced into text-messages that are downloaded into teenage girls’ cell phones. The cell phone novel became a phenomenon in Japan, and now a traditional-printed-paper edition is a giant bestseller.

And its success, I swear, has launched a whole mobile-phone-based literary industry in Japan…selling new and classic fiction for $5 or $10 a title.

Now I'm all for anything that encourages reading …but reading a novel on a cell phone? That is a deeply unappealing idea to me.

And although I do have a musical ringtone on my own cell phone….

CLIP: Kurt’s ringtone

…I can’t really imagine paying cash money for a favorite song.

Unless, maybe, it was this:

CLIP: STUDIO 360 THEME MUSIC as ringtone.

This is Kurt Andersen in Studio 360.