The Speculist

Every office has one. He's the guy that isn't satisfied with just a cell phone. He's got the phone, but he also has a PDA, an iPod, and maybe something extra like a pedometer. And he still has a pager.

I'm not sure why he would have a pager. If you can get a call, an email, and a fax from your waist, you probably can get by without a pager.

But I have sympathy for these guys (they're always guys). They're the ones who are impatient for the future. They want the one killer device that can do it all, but they are unwilling to wait for it. They want a PDA, camera, phone, radio, iPod, pager, email, fax, coast-to-coast walkie-talkie, pedometer, calorie counter, Internet devise and they want it today.

Hey, me too! But two or more devices on the hip makes a utility belt. It's just not the cool kind of Batman utility belt that we guys dreamed of as kids.

We dreamed of the belt on the left and got the one on the right. Or maybe, if you're a child of the 70's like me, you got the one below. Check out that "Bat Communicator" in the image below. Was that not a cell phone? We've come full circle.

I expect that the killer-combo gadget will arrive in the next few years. That office geek with the utility belt will be back down to one gadget on his belt like the rest of us - and then it will be on his wrist, and then it will disappear into a skin-colored tattoo that displays when and as needed.

Now that will be cool. Of course any seven-year-old knows that being Batman would be even cooler.