I've just got to get my thoughts down...

On a cell phone that is. Tippity, tappity, type type type. A sure sign of our living at the extreme edge of modernity is reflected in our rather sudden ability to communicate with anyone anywhere at anytime (or "A3" for all you acronym aficionodos.) Though it's been not even a decade, and with hardly a burp of uncertainty, we've plunged ourselves into a world of immediate communication truly unimagined in even the dorkiest science-fiction. The convenience of cellular technologies can hardly be disputed; even the most curmudgeony critic of cell-phone use will probably not hesitate to place them in the hands of his own children when the time comes, you know, for safety and stuff. After years of reluctance and doubt, and watching the gradual decay of payphone accessibility and maintenance, my own backward-looking tendencies finally gave way and I too am tapped into the virus that is cellphone culture.

But even still I remain far behind the times. It turns out that these phones can do a lot more than merely relay my voice into the air and back again, so much so that the term "phone" is grossly misleading. While most of the world lags behind, in Asia, led by Japan, where the cell phone gods gaze down from their fabled Olympus, so-called third generation mobile phones (smaller, faster, larger storage, superior porn-browsing capability... how about embedded radiation sensors!) are thriving. You know that fourth generation aren't far behind, and dare I suggest look out for fifth and sixth, yes perhaps even seventh generation phones in the fabulous future!? These little beauts can encompass a person's entire world, which says either that our worlds are small or our tiny technologies are in fact incomprehensibly expansive. How did we get by without cell phones? Best not to think about it, indeed, most people aren't (including me, lest my tone suggest otherwise).

As with so many other consumer-aimed technologies, the Japanese have also pioneered a completely unforeseen use for their cell phones: They're writing, er, texting, novels with them. In a fascinating article in the New Yorker, you can read about the enormously popular cellphone novel, which not only compete with your garden variety books, but were bestsellers in 2008. According to the author, in Japan, "it is hard to overstate the utter absorption of the populace in the intimate portable worlds that these phones represent." Pretty awesome thought, and apparently more than a few people have little trouble using only their thumbs to write, in some cases, 300+ page books! I use all ten digits and can hardly muster a couple paragraphs. The article points out that the majority of these books are written by young women for young women, and usually tell about their constrained family lives and love troubles. Numerous sites provide forums for people to write what amounts to serial novels, with authors submitting their pieces whenever it's most convenient for them.

The rest of the world may lag behind Japan, but perhaps the gap is closing. Sites which provide cell phone novel formats have recently sprouted up in the English-speaking world. Will the next great novel come from the furious thumbs of an avid texter? No, probably not, at least not for a while. A brief perusal of a few pieces on offer and I feel justified in my condescending old-timey scowl. One novelist/texter tells his readers that, "I wanted to write a novel that I would enjoy reading myself." Gee, sounds great. Then again, I feel a filmy glaze starting to form over my eyes and something tells me any doubt about texting novels will be met with sheer indifference. The texting medium is normal for people my age, let alone the youngsters for whom cell phones are an obvious and natural fact of life. That's all for now, CUL8R.

(Obama Blackberry update: "They're going to pry it out of my hands."