The Sept. 22 article "Step Away From the Phone!" attracted 200 comments from Times readers who shared examples of cellphone abuse in every sphere.
Jan Chipchase and his user-research colleagues at Nokia can rattle off example upon example of the cellphone's ability to increase people's productivity and well-being, mostly because of the simple fact that they can be reached.
The best example of this are cellphone networks in Africa and how absolutely transformative that business model has been for everybody's lives across the continent.
Mr. Eckenwiler offered the example of drug investigations: A cellphone carrier can establish where a suspect met his supplier and how often he returned to a particular location.
To sidestep the government's blocking of the Internet and curbing of cellphone access, for example, some of the more active antigovernment protesters distribute flash drives and CDs with videos of the fighting to friends in other towns and to journalists.
One Interphone study, for example, found that after a decade of cellphone use, the chance of getting a brain tumor goes up as much as 40% for adults.
It can be seen as an example of markets outstripping governments: Nimble cellphone companies profit while lumbering Indian authorities are unable even to stop the propagation of water-borne disease through defecation in the open.
The department maintains a state-by-state tally of cellphone laws that shows, for example, that Kentucky already bans cellphone use by drivers under 18 and by bus drivers.
He does, however, provide us with one of the most inventive cinematic examples of death by cellphone.
In Europe, for example, every cellphone uses the same kind of power cord — micro USB — so people no longer accumulate boxes of orphaned, incompatible adapters.
