I am a Selective Luddite

As some of you know, I am a luddite when it comes to cell phones. I don't want one, and I do my best not to have one. I had one for the first half of 2003 when I lived in Berkeley because it was the only chance of having a private phone number. I was living in the room of somebody else's house, and my landlady's 98-year-old mother apparently was quite a fan of answering the phone and talking to people. The mother was a nice lady --- she once asked me if my family went back to "The War", by which she meant the civil war --- but she wasn't particularly coherent and I figured there would be massive communication problems if I didn't get a phone.

Now here I am 10 years later spending 4 months in Palo Alto for my sabbatical. I again don't have access to a landline and I plan to hang out a lot with my friends --- that is why I chose to spend my sabbatical in Palo Alto, after all --- so I've gotten a phone to use for the next 4 months.

And just to prove I am a selective luddite, once 4 months have passed, I am going to drop my new phone off of the top of a very tall building. I might as well make it literal.