Where's Your Lightsaber?

One topic from a previous post that has come up more than a few times lately has to do with what I shall call the belt-cell-phone-phenomenon and the accompanied trembling that it produces within me. It marks, I believe, a turning point in human history in general. Not since the invention of the Swiss Army Knife and the bifocal has man invented a technological device that commonfolk have deemed integral (and appropriate) to attach to one's person. I say commonfolk because there was a time when the calculator watch made a foray from the laboratory environment into the broader world of humanity, suggesting that math and number-crunching were a valuable part of daily existence (thankfully, however, it seems we have sobered up from whatever hallucinogens they slipped into the making of Coke II or Clear Pepsi and realized that math, like firearms, is not something that should be used by the general public). But now the time has come, and we have evolved once more.

You can tell a lot about people by what they attach to themselves. A watch says you want at least a somewhat ordered life and understand that the days are fleeting. Knives (be they utilitarian or of the butch sort) hearken to a somewhat primordial desire within all men to tame the wilderness about them (or at least be like MacGuyver). And now with the phone we can show to the world that we have the desire within us - sometimes very badly - to communicate and be communicated with. Sometimes, however, this desire can procreate in our subconscious, and convince us that we should be carrying the cell phone, and the pager, and the pda, all on the belt: such as the man sitting currently to my right as I type this.

Why do I bother mentioning all of this? Because deep down I fear, nay almost nervously vomit, that someday, somehow, that man will be me.

I was at a costume party the other night in which I was dressed as Dwight Schrute. One of my friends, who doesn't watch The Office, came up to me and said "Are you supposed to be yourself in twenty years?" Funny? Maybe. Frightening? You bet. So I say all of this to you, the indefinite blogosphere, so that someday if one of you witnesses me attempting to make the jump from technological convenience to compulsive nerdonic obsession (it's only a matter of when) you may politely tackle me and remind me that there are better things to live for.

And so how may I help this Jedi of Futures Past sitting beside me? If his desire to be communicated with is this intense maybe I should just say Hi.