A Tough Call: Invisible Phone Or Invisible Friend

Jim Janikowski of Motorola wears Oakley sunglasses with Bluetooth attached. (By Jim Sulley -- Associated Press)

"Like you're a robot," nods Stephen Robinson, 57, who has stopped to talk to Roane at Union Station because they're both wearing the same Plantronics wireless earpiece. He's in town from the Bay Area on business.

"It just looks like they're trying to be important," continues Roane, quoting his girlfriends.

"Yep, yep," Robinson agrees, then takes off his earpiece. Ooooo, get ready for some real intimacy now .

And yet, and yet, we find this all irresistible.

Last year, a scant 2 percent of Americans were "extremely familiar" with Bluetooth, this technology enabling the wireless headsets. This year, that number is 50 percent, a statistical skyrocket dubbed by market analyst Brian O'Rourke as "really shocking."

And there's more: In 2005, 33 million wireless earpieces were shipped worldwide, he says. This year's predicted number: 55 million.

This is our future. Before long, our little street game of Crazy? Or cellphone? will seem a quaint anachronism, like an old address book with no extra spaces for "e-mail" and "cellphone."

There's just this final glitch to work out: Discerning when, during conversations, a headsetted or earplugged someone is talking to you, or talking on the phone. This gets especially confusing because the contraption doesn't necessarily ring, and you can answer with your voice -- mumble, mumble, no fumbling with a phone required. So how do you tell when the conversational tides have shifted? Further complicating matters is this: There is no receiver to move back and forth, pulling it back toward the neck when they're talking to you, and perching it by their mouth when they're talking on the phone.

Take, as Exhibit A, this exchange between us and Roane and Robinson at Union Station, as they discuss life lived in Bluetooth:

"It's pretty good, pretty good," Roane says.

"I have the Motorola," Robinson says, adding something about "better reception."

"Hey," Roane says. "What's going on?"