If you’re like me, five years ago you didn’t own a cell phone. In the next few years, it will probably be the most important, all-encompassing device in your daily life. It will be with you at all times, filled with digital content that is both trivial and vital, from your “to do” list to the details of your identity. The more you use it, the more indispensable it will become. Within a short time, this tiny gadget that you didn’t have and didn’t need will become the very thing you can’t live without.

Many people who have resisted owning cell phones are now buying them because of the pressure from friends, family and colleagues, or the obvious benefits in an emergency. It’s simple: the reason people need to own a cell phone is to send and receive phone calls, any time, any location.

But as you may have noticed if you’ve visited a phone store lately, it’s impossible to buy a cell phone that is, simply, a phone. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times (September 15, 2005) said it well: “Cell phone users tend to fall in two camps: those who use their cell phones to make calls and those who use them for everything else.” The list of “everything else” included e-mail, Internet access and instant messaging; movie information (with directions and options to purchase tickets); music and pod casts; games and television shows; news, weather and stock quotes. These are in addition to the phone’s cameras (still and video) appointment book, address book, music and video players. You get the picture.

Cell phones have all these features not only because it is technically possible, but also because it’s good business for the phone manufacturers and carriers. They want people to upgrade to (i.e., purchase) new and more expensive phones as often as possible. They determine what to add by looking at the individual products consumers are carrying, such as iPods, Game Boys, GPSs, PDAs, etc. Instead of buying all these items, you only have to buy the phone. Next year: more features, new phones.

Many objects that are currently able to connect to your cell phone wirelessly will soon be part of the phone itself. For example, devices for recording aspects of health and physical activity, e.g., pedometers and heart rate monitors, are already being employed in studies for the prevention of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. By having these devices in the cell phone, it is more likely that users will keep track of their progress, and will have that data available for health-care practitioners. In addition, the cell phone can monitor and alert users based on real-time information: “Beep! It is 6 p.m. and you have not walked your required five miles today!”

You’ve probably seen the real-time map in the dashboard and heard the voice that announces point-by-point directions through the GPS (global positioning system) that comes in many new cars. The GPS knows the coordinates of where you are as well as where you want to go.

Many cell phones already have this capability built in; a few carriers are beginning to enable its functionality. At universities including University of California San Diego, students are exploring the potential of “location-based information services.” In projects such as ActiveCampus, students use wireless signals to find one another. Let’s say you’re walking by a café where a friend is having lunch. Your phone alerts you, and you come in to join him.

A more commercial example is one in which your phone signals you as you approach your local grocery store, and reminds you to buy milk. Your phone knows where you are, where the grocery store is, and it knows that you entered milk onto your shopping list. Product manufacturers are now considering e-mailing discount coupons to your cell phone as incentive to buy their product instead of your normal brand. This already takes place in the supermarket: look at your receipt and you will see coupons for Ben & Jerry’s to replace the Häagen Dazs you just purchased. If you have a supermarket card, your store already knows a lot about you. You probably don’t mind having given up some of your privacy in exchange for those discounts. Are you willing to take it one step further, and allow the store to know when you are nearby, if it promises to take ten percent off your grocery bill?

These are a few of the ways the cell phone will become an integral part of our lives—much more so than it is now. Its use and our dependence on it will grow exponentially. The more I learn, the more excited I get about its potential to add to my life—and the more anxious I become about what it will take away.

© 2006 W. Richmond