Part of an early 'mobile'

The late Oil Age was characterised by a race for human attention. This race was enabled by the development of personal mobile communication devices, or ‘mobiles’. This item is part of an early example.
Mobiles were considered an essential accessory and were perhaps an individual’s single most important possession.  They were carried everywhere by their owners, even to bed, and people often preferred to communicate by writing text on their devices, rather than speaking face to face.
Later, when it became possible to embed microchips directly into people’s bodies and brains, these devices were known as ‘neuras’, reflecting their integration with (and sometimes control of) the body’s vital functions and signals.
These devices enabled the rapid growth of the ‘attention economy’ which led in turn to widespread human digital addiction. The latter affected all age groups, even toddlers, until restricted by the Young Persons Communications Act in 2035.
Whilst undoubtedly useful, the devices monopolised their owners’ attention (often generating anxiety as a by-product) for 24 hours a day with sounds and visual prompts, and their increasingly sophisticated algorithms enabled the manipulation of people’s emotions and activities.
Through their command of the attention economy, digital entrepreneurs amassed huge personal wealth and unimaginable political, economic and social power. This power was a significant factor in the undermining of democracy in the late Oil Age, but, paradoxically, it also accelerated the latter's collapse, leading ultimately to the emergence and restoration of the values of cooperation, justice, compassion and social responsibility that we know today.