My wife and I do not have cell phones.  This is partly a function of our age; we don't leap into using the latest technology just because it's there.  A few days ago, we promised ourselves that we would get a cell phone when we had experienced 100 occasions on which we thought one would be useful.  So far, we've thought of five.  We are not technophobes.  We both have computers with Windows XP, we have a widescreen TV set on which we watch DVDs, I have a website and this blog, we know how to use a scanner and to program a VCR (and I expect to get a DVD recorder soon), and so on.

However, we have become amused – and somewhat annoyed – by the obsessive use of cell phones everywhere.  The other day I saw a lady doing self-checkout at Walmart while talking on her cell phone.  My wife sees a coworker who drives into her company's parking lot talking on her cell phone every morning, and she continues talking all the way to her desk, repeating the same procedure in reverse every day at quitting time.  To whom is she talking every day at these times?  Or is it just a habit – or an addiction, such as people's habit of automatically turning on the TV when they enter their homes, even though they don't watch it?

Students walk around college campuses talking on their cell phones instead of to each other.  I've seen three walking together doing this – though they aren't "together" at all because each is in her own little world of cell phone-itis.  Others are in cocoons of sound, wired to Walkmans.  When I was in college, we discussed our classes or our weekend plans – or even engaged in a little preliminary courtship.  All that has vanished.

Is it really necessary to talk on the phone and shop at the same time?  This sort of multitasking suggests to me a kind of arrogant display of busy-ness ("Look at me.  I'm so important that I have to do two things at once").  It also suggests a perverse desire to cut oneself off as much as possible from human contact, even in the marketplace.  This is perhaps why people don't object to self-service checkout, even though it is the store's way of getting shoppers to replace clerks free of charge.  One can go shopping and not talk to another human being in person. I have always preferred talking to people face to face instead of on the phone.  People's facial expressions add nuance and depth to what they are saying; furthermore, it's harder for people to lie and deceive when they are talking face to face.  Perhaps the addiction to the cell phone and the concomitant reduction in face-to-face communication has something to do with people's increasing difficulty to have honest relationships with one another.  Is it possible that, when we spend a large chunk of our lives relating to machines, we lose some of our ability to relate to people?  We all know the stereotype of the computer nerd who has the social maturity of a two year old.  Is that what we are becoming – humanoids integrating into a machine world?  Is The Matrix more than a fictional metaphor?

Just about every technological advance has been abused in some way.  Despite its many benefits, television has become the national soporific, by which every night millions of people allow their brains to be hypnotized so that they are vulnerable to the suggestions made by a constant barrage of advertisements, including those that tell them how to think – and vote.  Computers and the Internet are also marvelous tools, but they are used for everything from distributing pornography and spam to providing students with new ways to cheat.

But the most open, public, and ubiquitous display of the abuse of technology is the widespread use of the cell phone when it is not necessary.  If I had a dollar for every time I've wanted to snatch a cell phone from somebody and smash it, I'd be a rich man.