Being able to stay in touch is great, but only on my terms. When I leave my apartment to go to classes, or someplace else on campus, I leave my cell phone in my apartment. Why? Because if I'm going to sit in a classroom for an hour, which I'm paying to do, then I don't want people bothering me with text messages, pointless phone calls or other stupid stuff like that. And if I do take the phone with me, I make friends with the "off" button. That's probably my favorite feature, hehe.

I like being completely unavailable. That's the whole point of going out and doing things away from my apartment. That's why I go off by myself and ride my bike, hang out in the library, etc. I don't like being available 24 hours a day.

But I think I'm the only one on this entire campus who feels that way. I watch fellow students send text messages back and forth the entire class meeting. Or, they grab their phones to call their friends the second class gets out. They've only been out of touch for 50 minutes, but they're going through some sort of withdrawal symptoms or something.

How did these people manage to live before cell phones became affordable?

I understand that some people need to be available. Some employees need to be on call. Or people have children, and like to be available in case one of them becomes sick and needs to be picked up from school. But these situations are different. The college kids are just addicted to the stupid phones.

My biggest question, though, is about the cell phone technology. Why do we need miniature iPods in our wireless phones when we already have portable MP3 players that are a) cheaper than the phone and capable of holding a lot more songs? Why do we need to browse the Internet on screens roughly the widths of our thumbs? And why, I must ask, do we have to take low-quality photos of pointless junk with these phones and immediately send these images to every friend we have?

So. Yes, I hate cell phones. I appreciate the very basic point of them (being able to make and receive calls as long as I have a decent signal). Beyond that, I don't care.

What really grinds my gears, is when elementary school kids have cell phones. What in dante's inferno does a fifth grader need with any form of telecommunication?!? Granted, their parents may give it to them in case they are stuck somewhere and for safety purposes, but too often these days, they also have Ipods! This perplexes me beyond belief. Here's a simple little equation to show just how litttle sense this makes:
4'th grader's music collection?barbie songs and maybe their older sibling's leftovers
ipod?1gig

What is done with the other 200 dollars of space? Absolutely nothing, my friends. In my day (although I'm only a highschool student) all kids really neded was a stick to beat eachother with and maybe a ball or something. Now, somone who can barely even spell pentium has the latest in micro technology sitting in their scooby doo lunchbox. Why is this? flip phones? what, so that the kid can take pics with it of his butt and of poo he finds on the sidewalk? text messaging? what, so the kid can type in 5318008 and turn the screen upside down? (you may remember this from the days of second grade with calculators, especially if you're a boy. hee hee)

geh... I've ranted too much. Ya see what you did Sarah81? lol

I need my phone, my contract expired and now i'm hunting in Toronto for the best deal possible because my old V300 well lets just say RIP. =P But yea I just became so attached to it, that i don't leave any room without it. I don't know its just become a thing of mine. Though i do agree with kids in elementary school not need to have one of those. Pointless! Mainly for cool factor i guess you can say. Lately i feel naked because i don't have a cellphone working at all =( But still carry my disconnected phone as for my phone book. I just noticed how much quarters i'm throwing into the pay phones everyday... ARG!

Aaah finally someone after my own heart. Even I do like to go totally incommunicado at times. I even let my cell phone lie around at times allowing the battery to run dry. Sometimes I chuck it below the bed and forget all about it... More often that not I leave it at odd places inside the house..

Believe me or not - once I even found it inside the FREEZER (after two days of hunting)

Lol, the freezer what was it doing in there....

I guess Marilyn Monroe's dying message with her phone handset in her hands was that sooner or later mankind is to be born with cell phones.

Here in my country, over 95% of high school students (typically ages 16-18), and 60%+ of junior high's (ages 13-15) are cell phone owners. Cell phone operators are starting extremely heavy campaigns to lock in low grade elementary school kids (ages 7 to 9) and aged people over 60-65, since these are the bands with least posession rates. (One third [1/3] of the latter half of elementary school kids at ages 10-12 already have theri own.)

Me? Well, I guess I belong to some generation completely forgotton by those phone operators --- like it or not, you're going to be obligated to carry one 100% on, all the time. Wish the airpline companies will do away with their in-flight phones and internet services.... they used to be the only place you are peace in quiet.

I simply have no cell phone yet. However, when I attend a meeting, or while I am teaching some students, I expect them to purely powerdown they own cell phones during the hour of my class.
I don't name that technology things, I simply name that politeness. If what I am teaching is important for you, please no phone calls. Pople who don't need what I am teaching should simply stay home.

These days, text messaging are way much more common among teenagers than just plain "calling". I have no idea whats so cool about it (Even though I'm a teen myself ) and who wants to spend 10 minutes "typing" up some stupid message (like 5318008 ) to friends and send them off like 10 cents at a time when you can invite everyone over and have a good laugh over jokes that would cost nothing. Back when i was in Primary school (or elementary) no one had any communications devices and i guess it was the start of the "hotmail"-fluenza because everyone was basically hooked up to Runescape and hotmails. There was no need for cell phones even though they were already out.

Today, i see kindergardeners carrying little cells themselves. Those advertisements that actually try to target parents who don't want their kids to hold real cells NEVER work and the company knows that. Firstly, the phones are expensive, and secondly which teenager would willingly take the cell phone that restricts them so much they can't add people into their phone book these days? They'll be the laughing stock of the school! As Sarah had said, today, everyone is always available 24 hours. My friends away messages on AIM always have something similar to "Out, cell me @770-bla-bla". Cell phones are taking over the world and sooner or later in the near future everyone would have a little chip in their brains enabling them to IM anyone in the Earth.

Here's an interesting bit that I just found. Apparently the Guiness Book of World Records has a category for fastest text message typing - with a standardized message that the would-be record holders have to type, without predictive text or other aids. Strange. Sad. True.

Personally I only use my cell much on weekends so I can find people/they can find me for when we are going out, but during the week its off most of the time and I just use it to make calls, rarely to receive them. Then again I'm not a social butterfly either way so that might contribute to that.

On a side note about the text messaging being almost more popular now... isn't it weird that we went from having the tech to send text (letters) to the tech to send voices (phone) and then it seemed amazing to revert to a different way of sending text? which for all intents and purposes is inferior as far as normal conversations go... just something I've always found kinda funny.