I haven't had a cell phone since 2004... I was deployed to Afghanistan that year and we weren't allowed to bring phones with us, so I just shut it off and left

I haven't had a cell phone since 2004... I was deployed to Afghanistan that year and we weren't allowed to bring phones with us, so I just shut it off and left it at home. While there I noticed that people could be killed just based on LLVI "intelligence" which I found somewhat scary, so I didn't turn my phone back on when I returned. I've missed basically the entire camera-phone age and certainly the entire smartphone age, and I have to concur with the author that it is pretty wonderful. Also he's correct in that when people find out you have no cell phone, they tend to look at you like you have 3 heads. I suspect that one day we will reach a point when some serious things are impossible without owning a cell phone (like voting, transacting over the Internet, etc) which in my view will be a serious loss of freedom for me... in the meantime I'm very happy with my lifestyle and I plan to hold out as long as I can.