All of the talk about cell phones causing brain damage, cell phones causing sperm damage, cell phones distracting us on the road, cell phones changing our language into txtspeak... it's all secondary to the nature of being able to be contacted in real time by anyone at any time, for any length of time, about any number of things on any level of importance, without regard to what we are doing at that moment--and the issues that presents.
Ubiquitous mobile realtime omni-distance telephony is a concept still in its infancy compared to, say, writing a letter or having a conversation; mobile pseudo-realtime short-distance telephony is slightly older (radios), as well as ubiquitous realtime long-distance telephony (POTS), but those are not quite as impacting because of their nature. If we do not start to incubate ideas about priority, valuing time, and use of a communication medium as means to an end (rather than the end), we will end up in a deluge of endless phonecalls and texts and emails and notifications and ads and reminders and video messages and gossip phone chains and voicemails. I imagine it not unlike the future as portrayed in Disney's Wall-E, where it seemed 95% or more of the time was spent talking to a screen portraying a videoconference of another person talking to a screen, talking about minutiae and gossip, leading in turn to more talking... up to the point of almost nothing else being done, or perhaps the reality of nothing being done where constant realtime communication interruptions were not omnipresent.
To me, while I have to have a cell phone for practical reasons, it is a ball and chain attached to me so that I can never leave the whims and self-interests and random interruptions of others, even when I do leave the house, with no screening or warning, no time to digest, and guilt if I press "ignore," with the taunting voicemail icon left to sit there and remind me that now I have one more thing on my "to do" list that will at least take up a minute to check my voicemail, a few minutes to call that person back (if not much more), and another 5-15 minutes to get back in focus and back to work! It's terrible.
Now, how a split home/mobile phone with caller priorities, need priorities, time- and context-sensitivity, selective do-not-disturb, contact-information-referral ("work question? go ahead and email blah@blah, no voicemails accepted. goodbye!"), and time limits, which would not impose on my ability to always make emergency-type calls whereever I went, location data (for myself, destinations, and friends/family--how many times have you called someone to say 'hey, where are you?')... I have no idea how that would work at this point, and my concept is undoubtedly a little off, but it's only meant to illustrate some of the finer needs of my desired connectedness.
