Tech Hell: when did these tiny pieces of plastic become so indispensable?

Seriously considering buying a BlackBerry to meet the increasing demands of the business, and to capture all those fleeting thoughts and ideas. Maybe the BlackBerry 8800, since it appears to tick all the right boxes. But with my penchant for marathon MacBook sessions, will I succumb to information overload or device fetishisation?

I am not sure if we all would feel the same pain as poor Dennis Kneale, Managing Editor of Forbes magazine, but particularly for those urbanites amongst us, if you lost your treasured cellphone, you'd probably get that initial feeling of disconnection that you just never used to feel. My how times have changed?