Cell phone saturation

Next time you are out shopping, walking across campus, or on public transit; take a listen and a look around. How many people are talking on cell phones? Texting? Browsing? How many people have a Bluetooth headset on? How often are you talking, texting, or browsing on that cellular device?
Now, I am NOT anti-cell phone by any means. Google maps on my Treo was incredibly handy. So is being able to look something up when I am not near a computer. When the tornado sirens went off during my class Wednesday evening, most of us were on our cellphones getting weather updates while hiding out in the Callier Center's interior 'safe' rooms. Cell phones have become a convenience, and for some people a necessity.

The CTIA conducted a semiannual US wireless industry survey for the last half of 2009;

"The survey of wireless carriers revealed that over 285 million Americans are mobile subscribers, about 91 percent of the total population. […] Americans traded 822 billion text messages—5 billion per day—for the second half of 2009, and over 1.5 trillion for the whole year. MMS messaging is more than double year-over-year for the last half of 2009, with 24.2 billion photos, videos, and audio clips moving from one mobile phone to another in just six months." (Full article here.)

Unfortunately, this kind of convenience may come at a price. We may be in danger of being taken hostage by a self-made alternate reality - more concerned about (and preoccupied with) checking e-mail, facebook feeds, tweets, texts, and who knows what else than with the real, physical, immediate world around us.

MotherLoverGoddess shares my pondering and concern in her post Please Stop Texting:

I watched shows like Caprica and see the holo-bands the characters wear which take them to a virtual world and I think - how long? How long until that REALLY happens? Or Wall-e? How long until we are sitting in hovering chairs only talking to other people via a computer screen? How long? Not long. It's right around the corner people, it really is.