Andrew O'Hagan — whose books I keep meaning to read … has a delightful (and short!) essay in the London Review of Books:
My name’s Andrew, and I’m a reachaholic . . .
Nowadays, being unavailable is understood to be an act of aggression equal to driving tanks through the walls of the Danzig Post Office. To fail to answer your mobile phone, or to turn it off completely, is merely to announce that you are deep in the throes of a secret life. You don’t care, you’re not reliable, you’ve got something to hide, you’re screening. There are few modern crimes so remarked on as the crime of unavailability. Answer or you’re evil. Answer or you’re dead.
Everybody who really understands the Blackberry calls it a Crackberry, which underestimates its addictive properties. At least with crack you get to tilt your head back between puffs, or so my mother tells me. In any event, it’s the night-time that is really difficult: to turn it off is to accept that sleep is a sort of death, and to leave it on is to wonder all night what that crucial stuff must be (Australian gossip? American film rights? Adverts for Xanax?) that keeps the thing buzzing in the next room like there’s no tomorrow….
[Read the whole thing…]