On the road to ubiquitous computing, we tend to pick up a whole lot of shiny objects, PDAs, watches, pagers, cellphones, and the like. Whether we admit it or not, a lot of us are becoming part machine. we use artificial devices not only for communication, but also to offload tasks we used to do with our heads. Things like memorizing phone numbers and things to do, describing things we've seen, and even talking to people with our voice.

One reader wrote to me yesterday saying I never talk about being human, focusing on tech-tech-tech. That's true recently as, especially during this Winter break, I've been working on so many computer projects that most interesting stimuli come from the computer. But it isn't always this way. Several years ago I noticed a personal trend I call the 'cyborg cycle.'

Whenever I go to the airport and have to go through the metal detector I do a mental accounting of exactly how many battery-powered devices I have on my person or in my bags. The interesting thing is that this number varies by a roughly 18-month cycle, and that whenever I reach the top or bottom of the curve, I'm very proud of it. there are times when I won't wear so much as a watch, keeping all tasks in my head (and it's funny, I found that when I don't carry a watch, I can still tell the time to within 5 minutes, even if I haven't seen a clock in a couple hours). On the other side, I have what I can only describe as the 'technophilia dreamcoat,' a jacket I bought at the Gap two years ago that has a bazillion zippered pockets, one for each tech-toy.

Today for example, I haven't left the house yet and am not wearing any battery-powered device, but then I'm surrounded by three computers, two of which I'm using this second, so that doesn't really count. When I get up in a minute to get some lunch I'll put on the coat and load it up with:

• Obligatory Palm V PDA
• Nokia 5190 cellphone
• Canon Elph digital camera
• Stowaway keyboard (optional)

It's not the most I've carried, but as the items get fewer they get more capable and more complex. I stopped wearing a watch when I realized that the Palm, Nokia, and Elph all have their own clocks, and it's a bit redundant. I stopped wearing a pager when I got paging srvice on my Nokia. Soon PDA/Cellphones and PDA/cameras will be commonplace (and more capable than current offerings) and I'll wear less tech, while in effect having more tech. And of course, we'll all become more dependent on our technology.

I'm reading Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, a hard sci-fi book set half a million years in the future. I'm fascinated by one of the alien races, Skroderiders. Skrodes are a race of what are essentially palm trees that have reasonable judgement and decision-making capabilities but virtually no long-term or medium-term memory (anything more than 20 seconds). To push them to a higher level of sentience, another race long ago built the Riders, motorized vehicles and computers which the Skrodes communicate intimately with, and use as their medium and long-term memory, amongst other things. Over time the Skrodes become inseparable from the Riders (basically their PDAs) until they're eventually seen as one entity: Skroderiders. This seems to be the way we're headed.

Next week I'll write up a piece on exactly how some of the wearables folks at MIT are progressing toward this goal, and how the same tech could be used to help people with a variety of cognitive deficits.