And then there is the cell phone's modest screen capability. I carry my Palm Pilot, a small handheld device that I keep my schedule, phone numbers, and notes on, and that I could not function without. I also carry a cell phone, and occasionally a digital camera. It would indeed be handy to have all of them in one device. And a wireless link that was reliable, even if slow would occasionally be useful.
Truth is, the nation-wide deployment of even the slow wireless Internet coverage is spotty at best.
But this wireless frenzy does point out that we are all becoming much more of a mobile society, and we expect more and more of our lives to be reachable via the Internet. I can see a time coming when you'll be able to remotely control home appliances via your cell phone, perhaps even summon up a picture from a home security camera on your tiny screen. At a recent graphics industry trade show, I saw a display built into an ordinary pair of glasses. The big problem the designers hadn't solved yet was how to run a mouse in this walk-around environment, not to mention how to avoid walking into things while concentrating on the display. And watching people using them was pretty spooky.