Will Cell Phones Become Our Wallets?

  With technology moving at an incredible pace, companies churning out ever-more sophisticated and powerful devices, one is left wondering what will be the next step.
  Cellular phones are steadily taking over functions that previously required their own gadget. These days, it seems like cell phones without a camera belong in ancient history museums. Gaming, also, is being taken over. No more are the rudimentary snake games you found on cell phones just five years ago; some games for the iphone look like PSPs. Phones are increasingly becoming mp3 players. Phones have internet, calculators, converters, stop-watches, calenders, messaging, mamma mia! What's next?
  Wallets. If you ask me, within five to ten years, people will be leaving their house with just one device that has it all. We be able to pay for things at the store by scanning (or whatever) these devices, just as we do now with debit cards. It will be our communications device, still retaining all the functions that cell phones currently have, and more. Am I alone in this? No. (Hey-- I know what you're thinking, but I thought of it first.) In fact, the Japanese are already doing it.
  The real concern should be finding a limit to this consolidation. Sure, a device like this will be very convenient. But do we want our lives confined to a five-by-three inch device? What if we lose it? Judging from the way many are today when they use their phones and other gadgets, oblivious to their surroundings as if they are in another dimension, will these devices become a new body part? An essential -- the essential -- part of our existence?
  -- Ah -- Wait a second, I have to respond to a message on my blackberry. Be right back...