In 2004, when I was Thirty, I wrote about why I would never have a cell phone. You can read the entire blogpost here. An excerpt:
A cell phone? Sure, convenient now and then. But I would venture to say, having observed its use by almost everyone around me now for a while, more a nuisance and a bother. Why do I want to detract from my well-being and that of my neighbors?
Go ahead, call me a crank.
I didn't think I needed one. I wrote:
I'm perfectly reachable in reasonable time via phones at home and work, e-mail at home and work, IM, a blog, and good old letters.
How quaint.
That post was in response to a Robert Samuelson column in Newsweek in which is presciently wrote:
Cell phones -- and, indeed, all wireless devices -- constitute another chapter in the ongoing breakdown between work and everything else. They pretend to increase your freedom while actually stealing it. People are supposed to be always capable of participating in the next meeting, responding to their e-mails, or retrieving factoids from the Internet. People so devoted to staying interconnected are kept in a perpetual state of anxiety, because they may have missed some significant memo, rendezvous, bit of news or gossip. They may be more plugged in and less thoughtful.
Yet, when I went to CoH-OKC because they did not have an office, they gave me a cell phone. Argh.
Yeah, I did succumb to making calls and texting and even ruining the wonderfully long silent drives I used to take by talking.
I had little use for cell phones before Michael got a smart phone, and we used it for GPS and other purposes when traveling to California in 2008.
I didn't get my own smart phone till 2010 (I've still got that one).
After nine years of use, I find them convient, but I still despise them. Keep calling me a crank.