I'm staying hard-wired — for now

A new survey that looks at cell-phone use in the U.S. finds that people in Oklahoma and Utah, of all places, are most likely to have dumped their household land-lines in favor of wireless-only communications. (I don't know why I say "of all places" — I guess it's just that those states don't seem like the most likely parts of the country for so many people to have given up on that old stand-by, the hard-wired telephone.)

California prides itself on being a high tech sort of place, but it's lagging behind on this particular cultural transformation (which to me seems inevitable). At least 26 percent of households are strictly wireless in Oklahoma and Utah, compared to just 9 percent in California. That's a huge difference. It might have something to do with the youthfulness of the state — I remember reading that Utah has one of the youngest populations in the U.S., and younger people are clearly more comfortable with the technology.

Personally, I like the relative reliability of a hard-wired phone. I use my cell often enough, but the land-line gets more reliable reception, and I always know where it is. (Make that usually -- my teen daughter has been known to leave it buried under a week's worth of laundry.) It's easier to dial larger land-line phones, and I like the fact that I've had the same phone number for 10 years. I don't know why that seems comforting.

Here's another reason to hang onto land-lines: As cell phones get smarter and smarter, corporate America gets better and better at tracking our habits and pastimes, even our locations. Anything a marketer can learn about you from your computer usage, he can learn from your iPhone or Blackberry. We're losing our privacy little by little. But at least our phones are getting cooler and cooler.

Sigh.