I haven&#x27;t had a cell phone since 2004... I was deployed to Afghanistan that year and we weren&#x27;t allowed to bring phones with us, so I just shut it off and left it at home.  While there I noticed that people could be killed just based on LLVI &quot;intelligence&quot; which I found somewhat scary, so I didn&#x27;t turn my phone back on when I returned.<p>I&#x27;ve missed basically the entire camera-phone age and certainly the entire smartphone age, and I have to concur with the author that it is pretty wonderful.  Also he&#x27;s correct in that when people find out you have no cell phone, they tend to look at you like you have 3 heads.<p>I suspect that one day we will reach a point when some serious things are impossible without owning a cell phone (like voting, transacting over the Internet, etc) which in my view will be a serious loss of freedom for me... in the meantime I&#x27;m very happy with my lifestyle and I plan to hold out as long as I can.