From a technology blog:

We are rapidly becoming a society with electronic gadgetry permanently attached to our hand. This was driven home to me today when having a wonderful brunch with family members in town for a visit. We were sitting outside in a beautiful restaurant, enjoying the nice weather and tapping on our smartphones. I realized what we were doing when the conversation at our table lagged, and no fewer than five phones were being tapped with abandon. What a great opportunity for visiting was being lost to the cloud.

We weren’t the only ones either, once I noticed what my party was doing I looked around the restaurant and easily saw two dozen phones in hands. The need to be in touch with the happenings in the world has overshadowed our need as humans to be in close touch with each other. It no longer seems to matter that there is a lot we can learn from those around us, in person and up close. We have become a society that needs to be in touch with everything, everywhere.

The need to hear what’s going on in the world is important, don’t get me wrong. But there’s a time and place for everything, and let’s face it, that time is not when sitting down with friends and family. Let’s put down the phone and talk to each other. We’re nice people, let’s hear what each other has to say.

I need a smart phone for my business.  I am sorely tempted at times to fall into a range of bad habits with it, but I am pretty successful and keeping its use confined to business during business hours and not letting it interfere with human interactions otherwise.  It will be interesting to see what I do after I retire, which I will to in a few years.

I agree with stevus and Matthew. I don't have a cell phone either, and especially have no desire to get a smart phone.

There's nothing more annoying for me than to see someone in a group playing with their cell phone rather than interacting (or at least bearing with) their fellows. I have a cell phone, but I refuse to text (unless someone demands it).My cell phone was bought to be used as a PHONE, and not a web browser, photo gallery, news feed, video stream, or whatever other crap they can attach to it. That's what this laptop is for and it serves it's purpose. So dont expect me to be getting a retarded-phone anytime in the near future like everyone else (I don't want to be like everyone else).

I have great respect for this. I don't want to be like everyone else either. I don't want to go out there and buy all the latest gadgets to "keep up" with the crowd. People who do are victim of the bandwagon fallacy. I've been pressured numerous times to go along with the modern world. But I know that doing what God Wills is infinitely better than doing what the world wants me to do.

While I would love to piously inveigh against smartphones, I recently got a Droid and the machine is simply fantastic.  It has so many uses, it's almost unlimited.  This is after having the most basic of the basic cell phones during the whole initial Iphone / Blackberry boom.

Catholics are not supposed to be Puritans who reject everything in modern culture just because it's modern.  The point is to reject things that are SINFUL, not things that are modern.  The smartphones are like the Internet -- and really are basically smaller laptops with phones and cameras built in -- in that they are as good as what you use them for.

So while pagans may be using smartphones to look at porn and upload pictures of themselves making gang signs to Facebook, I can use it to study French when I'm at a deli, or to watch YouTube videos on the economic crisis in the shower, or to tap out missives when I'm stranded at church after Mass, or to take a picture of a freakish-looking "Jesus" at the Novus Ordo church and post it here on CathInfo ( I was going to do that but am suffering from a horrendous sore throat ).

The Droid is the one to get, because it is like a mini-Ipad without being as obnoxiously trendy.  It has a huge screen for a phone but is easy to put in your pocket.  The iphones are a little smaller, but it's enough to make a difference, it would be more of a chore to watch videos on them.    

Hope you feel better, Raoul. I agree that these modern things in themselves aren't sinful, it's how you use them. I just don't have any real use for a cell phone. For one thing I don't have many friends in my area, and for another thing I don't want to get caught up in it. I'll probably end up buying one eventually, but for now I'm in not hurry what-so-ever to get one.

They don't call them "smart" phones for nothing. They contain gps devices that are enabled even when the phone is off and pictures that you take with the phone are encoded, also. The place where the picture was taken can be discerned with decoding software if the picture is posted on the internet.

I don't have the link for this but I read it somewhere.
{grin smiley without reefer....that is a cigar, btw.}
So, maybe its not true.

A friend of mine used to text more than talk on the cell phone because for her it was a lot cheaper to do so. It's the very contrary for me. It costs us 25cents per text sent or received. I can't see people texting as much as they do with a price tag like that!

And dont get me wrong, it's not the cost of texting that turns me off on it, it's just the superficiality of the concept. It's definitely not like sending an email, let alone a letter.