Cell Prisoners

If you think your cellphone bill is a bit pricey now, consider some serious hidden costs. Like headache, anxiety or short-term memory loss.

Brain tumors, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.

And if you use a cellphone while you drive, consider the possibility that you are four times more likely to get into a car crash.

Now, none of these reported afflictions has been proven beyond the shadow of a scientific doubt. Though you can imagine that the same doctors who used to work for the tobacco industry will soon be seeking employment in the telecommunications sector.

The current evidence, however sketchy for now, has even prompted the prestigious World Health Organization to launch a multiyear study of diseases associated with cellphone use.

For now, there is only a handful of scientists ready to state categorically that cellphones are dangerous. Welsh radiation biologist Roger Coghill is one of the few willing to wave a red flag.

"Mobile telephones are arguably the most radiative appliance we have ever invented apart from the microwave," says Coghill, "and people are putting them by their heads—arguably the most sensitive part of the body."

But even if heating up your brain with microwave bursts is proven irrefutably to be safe, I still don't like cellphones. The convenience of your being able to reach people on the fly is easily outweighed by the indignity of their being able to reach out and bother you at will.

Now, before you label me a Luddite, I'm the first to admit that I couldn't function without a computer, and I freely admit that for me the Internet is indispensable.

And clearly the worlds of computing and communicating are converging in Personal Digital Devices like the Palm Pilot.

But, personally, I intend to keep my computer on my desk, subject to my beck and call. It's bad enough that we've all been trained to jump when a wall phone rings.

But even Pavlov's dogs didn't have bells attached to their collars.

For having a wireless device practically part of me is just too much like having a remote control inside of me.

I may be a geek, but I won't be a tron.

At some point, everyone has to draw some bright lines around certain parts. I draw the line at a cellphone.

I figure my private time, my undisturbed private time, is one of the most precious gifts of my life—especially since the time of our lives is on loan for so brief a passage.