What is the single most annoying product of modern technology -- at least when other people use it? If letters to the editor of this newspaper are any indication, the clear winner is the cell phone. It seems that many, if not most, of us experience a surge of irrational irritation when we see people jabbering away to invisible third parties on trains or buses or the street, as if the very act violated some unspoken rule of public behavior.
We shudder at the cheesy call tones, the "William Tell" overture or "The Mexican Hat Dance" tinkling away in someone's handbag. Then there's the annoyance of unsolicited calls. Increasingly, telemarketers with access to our cell phone numbers can -- and do -- catch us anywhere, anytime. Yes, we all continue to carry phones. Modern life would be unimaginable without them. But hasn't it been all along a love-hate affair?
Now, though, a story has hit the news wires that puts the ubiquitous little instrument in such a favorable light it could have been crafted by the cell phone companies' public relations departments. If it wasn't, it should have been. It's a fairy tale starring a cell phone and a telemarketer; a potential Disney movie; a fable for a new century that seems to have adopted as its personal motto what the novelist E.M. Forster wrote over 90 years ago: "Only connect! . . . Live in fragments no longer."