Watch or Glass? Or Both?

My rather staid daily newspaper occasionally makes an attempt to be cool and trendy by squeezing an article about technology and lifestyle between the reports of war, famine, crime, and pictures of the Royal Family. But it was still a bit of a shock yesterday to see the headline "42% of People Admit to Nomophobia."

At first I assumed it was another kind of attention deficit disorder they'd identified in kids, or something you caught from watching too many reality TV shows. But after perusing the article I quickly grasped the real meaning: fear of being without your mobile phone. And, from reading more, it seems there is an acute version of the phobia where you're not only without your phone, but you can't remember where you left it.

I suppose I've never come across this condition before because I always know where my mobile phone is. It's at the back of the third drawer down in the kitchen cabinet next to the sink. And if I did forget, there'd be no point in dialing the number from another phone and trying to trace the sound because it's turned off. So it looks as though I should be suffering from chronic nomophobia. Something else I can ask my doctor about during my next visit.

Yet, strangely, I don't feel any symptoms or stress. I guess some people that don't know me will say it's because I don't have much interest in technical gadgets. But that's obviously not true – we have a ton of them in our house, everything from a computer-powered TV to a fully automated weather station (with added solar intensity recording) to a robot vacuum cleaner. And plenty more gizmos and electronic wizardry in between.

But, somehow, I can't get excited about all this new portable and wearable stuff – though that's probably because I hardly ever go anywhere. I have a wristwatch that is guaranteed to be 100% accurate because it gets its time from a radio transmitter in Rugby, but I can't remember when I last wore it. And my phone is a proper smartphone, even if it is three or so years old, though it only ever gets turned on about once a month. I have a Windows Surface tablet, but I've never found any reason to take it past the front door - for some reason it seems to stop working once I get a hundred yards away from the wireless router.

So will I be a customer for some new wearable technology? I already wear spectacles, and none of the photos of people using Google Glass show it perched on top of an existing pair of prescription spectacles - maybe you can get a prescription Google Glass, or one that fixes to existing spectacles? And I doubt that, even with spectacles, my aging eyes are good enough to read anything useful on the one-inch-square screen of a smart watch. Perhaps they'll bring out a smart watch that projects the display two feet square onto into a nearby wall so that everyone else can read my email at the same time.

Or maybe my prescription Google Glass will have a zoom feature so I can see the screen of my smart watch...