Gorgeous fall afternoon. I had to head down to the main part of campus (~.5 mile from my building) for my insurance re-enrollment and to get my allergy shot.

So I walked. Walking is a joy; I don't get to do it enough. I really should take fifteen or twenty minutes at lunch and just walk around campus.

One thing that struck me, as I walked back to my building: the large number of people with cell phones seemingly glued to their heads. Now, I have a cell phone, I think they're wonderful inventions and there have been a couple times where it's saved me hassle (and I know there are situations where they've saved people's lives). BUT. I like being away from the phone. I like being "unreachable." I enjoyed my walk, not having to talk to anyone, beyond the simple "Hello" or "How's it going?" as I passed someone coming the other way.

As I walked, I thought - thought about a couple of journal articles I had read earlier, thought about what I needed to pick up from the store, thought about just stuff. And then I got to wondering: could the cell phone, someday, contribute to the death of introspection? Because when you're talking with someone (and I defy people to tell me all of those walk-and-talk conversations are deeply significant; most of the ones I've been an unwilling witness to have been pretty shallow), you're not necessarily mulling stuff over. You're not appreciating or, at the very least, tolerating your own company.

I guess, as someone who's basically a loner, that's something I wonder about - if we may be trending towards a population that's scared of being alone, that without a little handset with a friend on the other end spouting whatever, there's something scary and unsettling about standing there, listening to the drumbeat of your own heart or the random thoughts that bounce around in your skull.

Of course I could be totally backwards on this, and it could be the cell-phone addicts are the people who would be terrified of solitude in any time and any culture, and the cell-phone just provides a sort of non-drug medication for that particular disorder. (And dammit, if they can make "shyness" into a social disorder that is medicatable, I will argue that "not being able to tolerate being alone" should also be such a disorder).

I don't know. I just know that I like the chance to leave my office, and the forced-conversation that would happen if my phone rang, behind, and I don't welcome the thought that someone could easily track me down and force me to talk to them while I was out walking, or driving in my car, or shopping, or whatever.

As I said, I don't necessarily hate cell phones, I'm just wondering what impact they're having on how our brains work and how society works (And I will say, I wish to all that's good, that people would STOP using them in the grocery store in lieu of writing out a list ahead of time. It's very annoying to try to work down an aisle that's full of people talking into their palms, saying "Okay, so what brand of spaghetti sauce do you want?....The kind with mushrooms or with peppers?....Okay, do you want the low-carb pasta or the whole wheat kind or the regular stuff? And what shape?" Grrrrr.