• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, February 23, 2006

I recently made a half-conscious decision to stop paying my cell phone bill, which inevitably resulted in the termination of my service. What? A big-city tech reporter without a phone glued to his face? Sacrilege!

Weirder still, I've also temporarily sworn off any and all portable digital devices, including personal digital assistants, Smartphones, Sony's PSP, the Nintendo GameBoy, iPods, video iPods, global positioning systems, laptop, and tablet PCs. I don't even wear a watch. Ironically, I attribute my present atrophy and decline into a disconnected Luddite to my work as an early-adopting professional media and technology watcher.

To say that big things are happening at the intersection of tech, media, you, me, and everyone else is the understatement of the century, and it's -- well, I wouldn't say scary so much as thrilling. The problem is that it's all happening so darn fast, and it's getting less and less possible to keep things in perspective. So I'm taking a step back. To keep from drowning in a sea of possibilities, I'm taking a breather on solid and solitary terra firma.

What really got to me was the idea that I was maintaining a constant presence on the matrix -- that digital network connecting me to everyone and every recorded, or presently recording, piece of content, which is exactly what you're getting yourself into with any of the above gadgets and their progeny. Being on the matrix is a good thing, in a stupefying way, but it's going to take some time to flesh out all the ramifications.

Being on the matrix and always on, always connected, means that now parents can not only track their kids with a cell phone call, but literally track their exact geographic whereabouts with global positioning software built into the devices. And I'm sure it's only a matter of time before wives, husbands, mothers-in-law, and bosses get in on the action. There isn't a media company or marketer out there that isn't configuring products and messages for the third screen. So Fox's Bill O'Reilly, say, or Ronald McDonald can really reach out and touch us all anywhere, anytime.

Early efforts by companies like Allstate, which is sponsoring college football rankings delivered to fans who subscribe to an ESPN program from their phones, barely scratch the surface of what's possible as Internet-over-wireless devices proliferate. The technology is here. For example, 95 percent of new cell phones sold in July, August, and September of 2005 were Web-enabled, according to the research firm NPD Group.

The percentage of U.S. wireless subscribers using their phones to surf the Web has doubled to 12 percent since late 2004. Advertising and promotion isn't far behind. Last summer, visitors to Virgin Atlantic Airways' first-class lounge at London's Heathrow Airport began receiving ads on their phones for Land Rover's Range Rover Sport. In the U.S., San Francisco-based WideRay Corp. has begun installing commercial-beaming transmitters in movie theaters across the country.

I want to be clear: I'm not preaching abstinence from mobile technology. I don't plan on staying gadget-free for very long. I'm sure I'll take to the streets again with an iPod earbud in each ear, a Microsoft Windows Mobile-ready, Verizon broadband-enabled Treo 700W smartphone in one hand, Apple's new, truly momentous Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro in the other, and a Sony PSP in my back pocket.

Mobile devices offer any number of pleasures for enjoying content. Wireless devices and services also offer some of the best tools available for creating, distributing, and consuming on-demand media in a variety of forms. I look forward to cruising the Web one day soon on my mobile, or shooting aliens, or getting that RSS feed, or posting to my blog in real-time. By all means, jump in and enjoy mobile media; I'm just taking a moment to survey the changing landscape.