I’ve never been the kind of person who jumps up and down about the latest technology. My parents did not subscribe to cable TV until I was in my teens. Email hit it big when I first entered college but I refused to use it for months, afraid that a tiny piece of my soul would get sucked out of me each time I hit the "send" key. I didn’t get my first cell phone until two years ago, when I moved into my current apartment. I wasn’t about to pay for a land-line and a cell phone. Even now, my friends tease me constantly about my frequent failure to answer my cell phone. Just because I have a cell phone, I explain, doesn’t mean I always want to be "connected." If I’m watching a movie, I’m watching a movie. If I’m dining with friends, I’m dining with friends. Just because I can answer my phone doesn’t mean I should answer my phone. Nothing irks me more than seeing a family eating out at a nice restaurant with Mom, Dad, and the kids phoning, texting, or iPoding, having the hot tech device du jour glued to their ears, hands, or mouth. Like my mother has said to me before about not always answering the phone—the only real emergency is when a person is dead. And if they’re dead, they’ll still be dead tomorrow.

My partner Scott works as a computer guru and he’s always singing the praises of the latest electronic gadgets. I’m not even sure what half of his tech toys do, but I’m sure he could launch an atomic bomb in my general direction at a moment’s notice, so I try not to piss him off. His computer monitor is wider than my first television, and his television screen is practically the length of a football field. He has fancy speakers planted all around his living room, and I feel incredibly foolish when I jump an inch off the couch during a Geico commercial because it sounds like the cavemen are grunting from behind me. I don’t want blood-curdling screams coming from behind me, beside me, or between the couch cushions when I’m watching the latest flick in the "Saw" series. I love scary movies, but in the privacy of my own home, clutching my kitties tightly in my lap, I want to be scared in plain old one-dimensional sound, not from every corner of the room.

Because I’m so ambivalent about and even skeptical of technology, I was shocked to fall in love with the iPhone. Like all great love affairs, the passion took me completely by surprise, when I least expected it, stemming from an innocent chance encounter. One day, Scott dragged me out to several stores to gawk at Apple’s latest baby. The rest of the world had already welcomed the iPhone like a long-awaited prodigy into a family of special education students. I was being told that my cell phone was antiquated and obsolete, as doomed to the trash bin as Britney’s music career. I was having none of it. Store after store, I lectured Scott on the sheer silliness of shelling out 600 clams for a telephone. A TELEPHONE! He responded by listing all the qualities that make the iPhone so much more than a way to talk to friends and family. "It’s not a watered-down version of the Internet like other phones," he exclaimed with a twinkle in his eyes like a child at Christmas. I was waiting for him to shout out, "But wait! There’s more! It boils, it bakes! It chops, it cooks! It slices, it dices!" I couldn’t be less impressed.

That is, until I held a store model in my hands. I was instantly drunk with power. Scott heard the "oohs" and "aahs" emanating from me and assumed I’d somehow managed to locate a size 16 Bob Mackie gold sequin gown in an Apple store. But it wasn’t a gown. It was the iPhone. "Look at me! I’m bidding on eBay! I’m replying to email! Now I’m checking the weekend weather!" Scott was ready to leave the store before I was, and during the drive home, my mouth was too full of fresh crow to respond to Scott’s surprise. My brain was too busy justifying the $600 price tag to focus on a conversation. I didn’t buy one that day and I still haven’t, mainly because I just recently resigned with Verizon on a two-year plan. I must find a way to get out of this deal with the devil that prevents me from holding the Internet, great-sounding music, and high resolution streaming video in the palm of my hand. My obsession will not be denied! Where is the Lucy to my Ethel who can scam up a way for me to get out of this cursed contract?

They just dropped the price point on the iPhone by a third, which makes me even more apt to treat myself. Millions of people were shocked when the iPhone price point plummeted from $595 to $395. Anyone who purchased the device fourteen days before the price drop will receive a $200 refund. Scott missed the refund boat by only three days, and thousands of people flooded the Apple website and media outlets with much-deserved complaints. Apple offered a $100 store credit to all iPhone owners ineligible for the $200 refund, pacifying techno geeks across America. The last thing we need are thousands of outraged techies pouring into the streets, pulling pointy pens out of their pocket protectors, smashing windows, looting Best Buy, throwing out their backs attempting to lug 59-inch high-def television sets through the streets.

I’m not sure why I like the iPhone so much. I hate fads and I worry that technology pulls us further apart, not closer together. It burns me up that each time you invest in the latest gadget, it’s outdated in a few months and you’re expected to run out and sink money into its replacement. I refused to buy a DVD player until you could barely find VHS tapes in the Blockbuster aisles. "My VCR works just fine, thank you." I worry that if I buy an iPhone, I’ll feel the need to upgrade next year when Apple releases the version that really does slice and dice. Until recently, I’d held off the urge to splurge by asking myself, "Why in the world would I need to use the Internet if I’m not at home or at work?" But now I’m on vacation with no computer, and were it not for the saving grace of Scott’s iPhone, I wouldn’t be able to reply to emails, check my eBay, or check out weather.com for the beach scene. But then, I ask myself, would that be such a bad thing? The war rages in my head and the demons and angels arguing the two sides keep me up at night. To purchase an iPhone or not to purchase an iPhone. That is the question.

See, there’s another dark side of technology. It’s turning me into Sybil.