The future of mobile gadgets: How many will we carry? What will
they look like? What will they do?  Where technology is going.
March 15 2011 6:36 PM  The Future of Mobile Gadgets
Illustration by Robert Neubecker. Click image to expand.  I got
my first cell phone a little more than a decade ago, just as I
was finishing college and looking for my first job. I didn't
need a mobile phone; none of my friends had them, and I was
pretty sure they'd all mock me for getting one. (They did.) At
the time, there was still something ostentatious and vaguely
shady about mobile communications devices. There seemed to be
only a handful of reasons why someone would need to carry a
phone or a pager at all times: a) You were a doctor; b) you were
a drug dealer; and/or c) you were a self-important schmuck.
Neither a) nor b) applied in my case. I wanted a cell phone
because I like gadgets. If you pressed me on it, I might have
pointed out that Europeans and Asians were flocking to mobile
phones, so it seemed likely that America