We know what's worse for your health (in case you were wondering: we know cigarettes cause cancer, and there is no reliable link between cell phones and cancer), but what about your sanity: Novelist Jonathan Franzen on cell phones:

The world 10 years ago was not yet fully conquered by yak. It was still possible to see the use of Nokias as an ostentation or an affectation of the affluent. Or, more generously, as an affliction or a disability or a crutch. There was unfolding, after all, in New York in the late 1990s, a seamless citywide transition from nicotine culture to cellular culture. One day the lump in the shirt pocket was Marlboros, the next day it was Motorola. One day the vulnerably unaccompanied pretty girl was occupying her hands and mouth and attention with a cigarette, the next day she was occupying them with a very important conversation with a person who wasn't you. One day a crowd gathered around the first kid on the playground with a pack of Kools, the next day around the first kid with a color screen. One day travelers were clicking lighters the second they were off an airplane, the next day they were speed-dialing. Pack-a-day habits became hundred-dollar monthly Verizon bills. Smoke pollution became sonic pollution. Although the irritant changed overnight, the suffering of a self-restrained majority at the hands of a compulsive minority, in restaurants and airports and other public spaces, remained eerily constant.

Maybe the key to getting any new technology widely accepted is to make it a social phenomenon. Nuclear power, genetically modified foods (otherwise known as GMOs)- if someone can find a way to integrate them into our social lives (a chic restaurant chain that only serves GMOs, a radiation dosimeter that sends updates to your Facebook profile), the opposition will disappear.