Where is the a-cellular organism?

When I bought my phone a couple of months ago, I looked for something that would have the most features for the budget I had. This is not to say that I use all of them, but most features were about connecting with other people who are either beside you (bluetooth, infrared, anyone?) or away. Does this say anything about socializing trends via cell phones?

Apparently, it does! For some reason, the mobile phone seemingly encourages people to have the most remarkable conversations in public spaces! It provides us with a way to forget the boredom of a bus ride or a wait in a doctor's waiting room and instead interact with our best friend who is miles away.

This calls to mind advice from Miss Manners on cellphone etiquette. She said that cellphone use, when it does not disrupt the goings-on in one's immediate vicinity, may still be an etiquette breach - against the distant party being spoken to, who may be annoyed by a call whose entire message is "I'm standing in a line." Thus the caller is relieving his or her own boredom by inflicting it on someone else. And its not just the receiver of the call. What Miss Manners seems to have left out, is that the people around the caller and the receiver are also 'forced' or in many cases, very willingly, have to listen to the conversation. While on the bus the other day, I was privy to the most uncomfortable conversations - a married couple fighting. How do I know? Because the lady was saying, and very loudly, that he needs to stand up to his mother one of these days or she would leave him! I was going through class readings and found it very hard to concentrate.

With such technology, it is becoming increasingly hard to differentiate between public and private spaces. Like Richard Ling said in his book New Tech, New Ties, the mobile phone strengthens social bonds among family and friends. If this is the case, I wonder what happened to the lady and her husband?