The other night, in a fit of hedonism, I watched the movie “Crazy Heart” on my laptop while lying outside in the hammock. It was the ultimate luxury: two hours of downtime outside, watching a movie, slightly swaying under the trees. And what made it possible? Wireless communication.

I realize that many of my posts rail against technology. Here’s one that does not. A post in praise of cordless phones, laptop computers, inventions that untether us. I remember how I would contort myself to talk in private on a corded phone: squeezing into closets, stepping into darkened rooms, buying extra long phone cords that twisted and tangled. Now I take a phone with me wherever I go.

It’s interesting, though, that the privacy I searched for in the old days has not exactly been served in the wireless era. Are we truly untethered, or are we bound by much longer and more insidious cords?