What's a Cell Phone?

I've now fallen a week behind in the 23 things, so in a desperate attempt to catch up I'm going to try to write the three posts I need to catch up over this weekend.

First off, I'm supposed to write something, anything about technology. I've actually been thinking about writing this post for a while. A few months ago it dawned on me that cell phones are no longer just phones. The first inkling I had about this was the first time we took my stepdaughter to a rock concert about 6 years ago. When the obligatory slow song came along, instead of lighters all over the arena, everyone held up their cell phones. My initial reaction was to laugh, but then I began to think that it made a lot of sense. Smoking isn't allowed indoors in most places anymore, and only 1 in 5 people is likely to have a lighter on them, so why not cell phones? I started wondering who the first person was to do this, especially since only 6 years before that I distinctly remembered being at a concert where it was still lighters that were being held up during the slow song. All it took was the increasing prevalence of cell phones and a new trend arose seemingly out of nowhere.

But 6 years ago, those phones that were being held up were still just phones. In fact, most of them glowed with the green or blue of an old school LCD display. At more recent concerts I've seen the white and multi-colors of color SVGA LCD screens. And even beyond that, a lot of those phones were being held up with the LCD screen pointing away from the stage so that the lens on the front of the phone could take a picture.

More things have jumped out at me recently. My stepdaughter can type faster on a 3x4 keypad than I would have thought was humanly possible, and I've seen her simultaneously holding three conversations by text, five on IM, and commenting on Facebook pages. Not too long ago she was upstairs and forgot to turn on the light in the hallway, so out comes the cell phone to light her way. While she doesn't have a iPhone, she recently got an iPod Touch. With that she has a portable wifi-ready computer, GPS, and music player.

So what's a cell phone?

A flashlight
A lighter
A music player
A pathfinder
A web browser
A note writer
A calendar
An alert system
A camera
A game

and, of course, a phone.