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We all know the feeling of surrendering to the embedded biases of our devices. We let our cell phones ping us every time there's an incoming message and check our e-mail even when we'd best pay attention to what's going on around us in the real world. We text while driving.

What's really going on is, on your iPhone, you have 200 apps, and they're all collecting a little data on you. Twitter knows a certain thing, Foursquare knows something else, my Fitbit app knows something else, my Waze app knows something else.

The devices that our kids use are shipped from the factory with every possible audio, visual or vibration alert switched on. Each new app, website, tweet and message adds another layer of intrusion - each intrusion is cynically designed to get a response, and each response creates an appetite for another intrusion.

I'm always interested in whatever I can do to not look at my phone.

My laptop seems to know where I am, even if I don't. My cellphone asks me if I want directions to anywhere from the spot I am standing in. I buy a record online and Amazon.com sends me letters, telling me that people who bought what I bought also bought these other records.

But I do have a computer at home and a pretty good ISDN connection.

I didn't have any vices before the Internet. There are a lot of cracks in the day, moments where you don't know what to do next, so you have a little hole where you look at your phone. You want something that will mean you're not alone in that moment.

My life is scheduled to the minute. I used to be notoriously hard to get a hold of. But now, it would be irresponsible for me to say, 'I'm not checking my phone.'

I saw that e-mail was insidiously invading Phones 4u, so I banned it immediately.