I think it is a mistake to look at cell phones and e-mail as either all good or all bad. People seem to however, align themselves with one of these two camps. Being able to get in touch with people more easily is either fantastic in it's convienience or evil in it's infringement on personal time and space. I think we can find a happy medium and as humans living in a modern world this is our duty. I don't like that many traditional ways of making actual plans have been abandoned for "I'll just call you when I get in the area", however, I am grateful to be in contact with others when there is a crisis or change of plans, that in the past would have been very difficult to traverse. Now, a few phone calls and everyone is on the same page. Of coarse, I still very much value my privacy and personal time and the quick solution to this is setting clear limits with my cell phone and computer use. I don't take work calls on my personal cell and I never check e-mail on vaction or any work e-mail when I'm away from the office. So far, this plan has worked out well.

I didn't have a cell phone until half way through college and I don't know how I lived without one. If I was meeting someone and they didn't show up, I would have to waste so much time wondering, did something happen? Did I get stood up? It was a really annoying guessing game. On the other hand, I think that cell phones have allowed some people to be lazy. It's now much easier to keep someone waiting because the expected can just call and make up some excuse as to why they are running late. Before cell phones, we really risked ticking someone off by being a no show, and there was no guarantee they'd still be there when we arrived. Overall though, I think it has made life much easier, if you don't count the lovely health risk about which we're just recently learning.

Dont' bother getting a GPS unit by the way, remember on The Office, it drove Steve Carrell into a lake.