These days, being hip, being happy, being alive, is synonymous with being connected. You're not a full citizen until you own at least four of the five following electrical gadgets: personal computer; laptop; palm pilot; cellphone; motorized scooter. You're not an adult until you're able to walk (or scoot) out the door of your house and remain reachable via at least two separate methods.

Saunter through the city on any given day and witness the outcome of this trend. Every third pedestrian will be cocking their heads and listening to the emissions of a tiny hand-held device that links them to a world of other people walking through the city, cocking their heads, listening to emissions, and upping their chances of contracting cancer in later life.

Cellphones are not the newest or niftiest gadgets on the high-tech market anymore, but they remain the most popular. Why cradle a palm-pilot when you can get a cellphone that transmits e-mails? With constantly evolving features, cellphones succeed in keeping consumers hooked. One special interest group called Bluetooth is even working on technology that would allow cellphones to automatically subdue their ringers when the user ventures into public, or sound-sensitive, places. Cool, huh?

Even such smart features fail to explain the epidemic spread of cellphones among dot.com executives, convenience-store clerks, yappy cheerleaders, nine-year old boys, Italian grandmothers, and tweed-wrapped professors. At this stage, the phones' popularity is feeding off of the phones' popularity. Owning a cellphone has become de rigeur not because every hour of the day or night is a good hour to do business; owning a cellphone has become necessary because everybody else owns one. It's now a game of being a player in the game. Not owning a cellphone is like announcing to the world that you just don't figure.

And yet, despite their barrier-busting popularity, cellphones continue to be status symbols. Owning one remains an advertisement of your membership in some vague elite, regardless of the fact that every goon today totes a phone in their over-the-shoulder bag. Seeing a person speaking into their cell instantly makes you wonder who they're talking to, what it's about, and why you don't have anyone babbling away into your own earhole.