I still say that I hate cell phones. It makes me feel strange that everybody in the world has to be so connected nowadays, at all times. It’s as if everyone’s just…uncomfortable with solitude, anymore. Why can’t you ever be alone?

And yet, you can’t really function without a cell phone. Everybody expects you to have one. Plans are so changeable now precisely because everyone has a cell phone. It turns people into automatic flakes. And so that means you’ve got to have one.

Which makes me wonder: what’s going to be next decade’s cell phone, as far as communication goes? Cell phones and email are basically on par now, so of course the next step is to combine them. That’s where we’re getting these fancy things like internet-surfing phones and iPhones and IP telephony; PBX phone systems, Softphone, and all these other attempts at unified communications.

So when are these things going to become mandatory? When is voice over IP going to leave the world of business telephone systems and infiltrate everyday life? When is it going to become unofficially mandatory that everyone have not only VoIP, but everything that comes with it: from the software and hardware necessary to make it work, to measures to ensure VoIP security? When does it happen that our lives aren’t made easier by technology, but rather, just changed by it? When do we cross the line – so that our lives no longer dictate technological advances, but technological advances dictate our lives?

My friend has a theory that we will all be robots someday. Parts of our bodies will slowly be replaced by mechanical parts to increase efficiency, longevity, and so forth, until we are more machine than man. And that’s how robots are going to take over: not in some great robot war, but from the inside, and because of us, because we let them; because we become so dependent on them that we can’t let it be otherwise.

When I think about cell phones, I’m almost with her.