"A VERY LONG LEASH." A professor of mine revealed his distain for cellphones today. The quote above is his. Here's my rationale for avoiding cell phones:

1. It's an excuse. I don't need to deal with people who can't stick with the plan. "I can't get to our meeting because ________." We make plans because we value our time and the time of others. Trying to change plans at the last minute devalues both of these. If it's important enough to plan it out, it's important enough to follow the plan. Cellphones make people think that it is acceptable to change plans at the last minute, simply becasue they can contact you to tell you of their bad decisions. It's not acceptable.
2. What the hell is so important? The availability of unlimited calling plans and free nights and weekends should not mean that your ear gets sore from the constant pressure of a cell phone earpiece. Abraham Lincoln composed great speeches, formulated foreign policy, and lead the nation through the Civil War before we had electric anything. Not every event needs to be reported into your cell phone. I'm certain that there have been some very important telephone conversations in the course of history. I'm also certain that they didn't happen on the bus, in a train, while people were walking down the sidewalk, in the line at the coffee shop, in the grocery store, or in a public restroom. If the person on the other end of the line is so important to you, why are you buying groceries? Go unto them!
3. Voicemail is a device of the devil. Short messages are more efficiently communicated via email. How many hours to people spend sitting listening to "ummmm....ahhhh.....ok, well, call me when you get a chance... ok.... see you later!........WAIT! My new number is....." They then delete the number and never call you back. If they have to write your number down anyway why not spare everyone the trouble and type it into an email?
4. It makes you bad at things. Driving. Speaking. Concentrating. Having a face-to-face conversation. Attending a public event or gathering. Remembering telephone numbers. Cellphones make you bad at all of these things by eaither robbing you of precious mental bandwidth, by pretending to do the job for you (in the case of remembering numbers), or by actually surprising you and causing you to make bad decisions when they "go off".
5. They try too hard to be your little pal. Download ringtones! Custom screen things! Send pictures! Text your friends! OMG! LOL! All a phone needs to do is connect you to another phone. Hopefully the person you wanted to speak to is at that phone. All the other stuff is a waste of time. Instead of composing polyphonic ringtones people should read a damn book... and not the manual.

I've been thinking about this since I visited a friend in Chicago and we watched a man and woman have a "date" in which the guy talked on the phone for 45 minutes while the woman got progressively more depressed. I'm not exagerrating the 45 minutes. Might even have been closer to an hour. Cell phones make us less human. Try to quit.