I got an iPhone recently. A phone is a perk of my job, but the make and model is my choice. I could have just as easily asked for a cheap nokia, but I chose the iPhone because the potential of the technology fascinates me.

After playing with it for a few days, I have some thoughts about it. This isn’t a review by any means. There are so many reviews for the iPhone that another would be a waste of space, every if the virtual space is near limitless.

No, this is something else.

First, I’d like to explain a little about myself. I’ve always been something of a loner. Not a Columbine, Virgina Tech sort of loner, mind you, but the stigma of the word loner carries with those negative ideas in the cultural ethos. No, it’s more that my favorite activities are inherently solitary ones: writing, reading, playing single player video games, thinking alone, and other things like that. Those types of things are hard to build a community around, except in specialized cases, and the circles I now find myself in on a regular basis are not specialized.

In fact, I almost wonder if it’s something in my genes. When I was very young, I sat with my grandfather by a campfire. He has a small cabin up on the shores of a lake in Maine’s wilderness, and my family would go up there to spend time my grandfather and grandmother during the summers. Once, fireside, my grandfather was joking with my father, and he said, “Danny, I don’t have any friends and I’ve never wanted any. The closet thing I have to friends is a list of enemies, and my wife is at the top of that list.”

The slight against my grandmother (whom I love very dearly) aside, I knew what he meant. My grandfather is a man for whom being alone, solitary, is the ultimate state of being, either because he didn’t like the company of others (or others couldn’t stand his company, which is possible), or because of how he liked to spend his time: hunting fishing, camping, hiking, riding, in short, solitary pursuits.

I didn’t understand his sentiment then, but as I grow older, I begin to appreciate it more. My father is like his father, and I am the same. I enjoy my solitary pursuits. It makes personal relationships difficult.

Thus, it’s with that background that I received the iPhone, a device focused on connections. Of course, I’d had cell phones before, but never something with so many connections: telephone, SMS messaging, instant messaging, email, internet, and a multitude of other connections, depending on the installed applications.

When I first started playing with the device, I was a bit disappointed that it doesn’t allow applications to run in the background, that is, aside from email, SMS, and phone capibilites. I wanted to be able to receive instant messages all the time on my phone, but without the IM client being actively open on the phone, that was not possible. That bothered me. Of course, I’ve heard there is a new firmware for the phone coming soon that might allow an application (such as IM) to run in the background, but currently that’s not possible.

Searching through my feelings, I wondered why I was so disappointed. I mean, instant messaging programs are running on my computers (desktop, laptop, and work desktop) and I rarely pay attention to them. The same 5 tired contacts have been hanging around in my AIM list since the late 90’s, and my personal gmail account is barely better. Facebook has a chat built into it that can be accessed through their website, the iPhone, or various plugins for IM clients like Pidgin, but the majority of my facebook “friends” are simply people I have no interesting in maintaining “instant” communication with, if I am interested in maintaining any relationship at all.

So why was I disappointed that this phone didn’t have the connective capabilities that I had hope for? I don’t understand it. I didn’t really need more connection. I barely utilize the current capabilities of the networks I use now. I don’t like answering my phone; IM’s are usually interruptions that annoy me. Email is alright, I guess, though not many people use it anymore. It’s not instant, and that’s why I like it and most people don’t.

Still, I really enjoy many aspects of having a mini-computer in my pocket. Web access, maps, and things like that have already proved themselves valuable to me. I love information, reading, and data access, so that part is great.

But the strange thing about having more connection to my rarely used social network is that all I feel is less connected. Having all those communication options in my pocket is a stark reminder of how little connection I really have with other people. With the iPhone in my pocket I get to be sure that no one is messaging me and I’m not messaging anyone else.

So why am I disappointed that the phone doesn’t have as much connection as I was hoping? I don’t know, but I have a few guesses.

What I’m really excited about with the phone is the blurring of the line between the physical and the virtual world. The iPhone knows where I am in physical space (which would frighten my grandfather for privacy reasons, but doesn’t really bother me) and with it in my pocket I have a constant connection to the virtual space where I feel more at home. In the virtual space

I am a not comfortable in the physical space as much as I am in the virtual. In the virtual I am a disembodied voice, a weaving figure on a webcam, a few quick paragraphs on a forum post, an unread blogger, a guy who for some reasons uses Lando Calrissian for almost all his online avatars, but those things are all my creations, to be changed at my whim into something different.

In the physical world I am a 5’7” guy with more weight than he wants (even if I’m the only one who notices), who doesn’t know how to dress well (and doesn’t really care), drives a crappy car (it’s junk, but it’s paid for), goes to work, and spends most of his time sitting in front of various screens. My voice doesn’t project as far as I’d like, I don’t have the drive to work-out as much as I should, and I tend to fidget in social situations because there is always something behind them that I don’t understand, some connection that others feel and I do not, and I’m trying so hard to examine that connection to determine precisely what it is (which is my problem, I think), that I feel disconnected from it. Suffice it to say, there’s so much data flying around in the physical world that I don’t know how to organize it and explain it, and don’t know how to interact with it.

In the virtual, however, I can set my own pace, display myself in the way that I want, because I control all aspects of my virtual self. I don’t have to be too short, or too heavy, or not attractive enough, or worry that I’m fidgeting too much. I am what I say I am.

I construct myself. I am not a loner or a socially awkward person. I am a person designed. I am a creation.

I like to play video games, and although I prefer single player, for a while I played World of Warcraft and found myself as the raid leader for a decent guild. What that means, for the non-gamers out there, was that three times a week I would lead twenty-five people through interactive challenges, wherein each person had his own role, and I would coordinate (with the help of a few others) everyone through the completion of those challenges. That doesn’t sound like much (it’s only a video game) but organizing 25 people without a set power dynamic was difficult.

But it was my virtual self that did this, as conveyed through my game avatar, my forum posts on the guild’s forums, and my voice, as I gave orders over a voice-chat program called Ventrilo.

Thinking about it the differences between my virtual self and my physical one, I’ve come to realize that the iPhone disappointed me because it didn’t provide me with as much connection to my virtual self as I wanted.

I yearn for a blending of the two spheres, a melding of the two selves – physical and virtual. I enjoy that certain applications on the iPhone provide a small amount of this – when I am downtown and looking for a place to eat, I can fire up an application that will track where I am and provide me with a map of places close to me, as well as reviews and prices. That virtual overlay over the physical world is the kind of thing I’m looking for, but it’s a far cry from what I’d actually like it to be.

Perhaps I was a bit naïve to hope for more from just a simple phone. But still, it disappointed me. The physicality of the phone itself still provides a physical connection to the virtual sphere, and I wish it was more seamless. Without the device, I am lost, and I hate carrying things in my pocket. Each time I pull it out to look something up, I feel like the utility it provides is undermined by the feeling that I have using it – that I’m showing it off, or it’s not actually vital to me. I don’t like that.

Maybe, it sounds like science fiction, and I’m sure many would disagree with me for the sake of natural purity, but I want technology directly integrated with my body. I want inserts in my eyes, or an upgrade to my contacts. The corrective lenses I currently wear should draw information upon the air that only I can see.

I want a wireless connection in my hip, storage space in my finger. A GPS unit hidden in the small of my back. And a hundred other devices inserted into my body that allow me to interface with my virtual self.

I want to be able to walk down the street with an HUD overlay that displays relevant information – maps, contacts, a film I’m watching as I appear to stare off into space on the subway.

I want to be able to use my eyes to record information like a video camera, my ears to record sounds. I want to be able to take pictures with my eyes via a vocal or mental command and upload those videos and pictures up to the web.

I want to be able to listen to music via an implant directly wired to the auditory receptors in my brain, without headphones or any ambient noise heard by those around me.

I want to be able to maintain constant contact with the friends of my virtual self, have him looming over my physical self as a constructed and powerful being of my own design, repairing the shortcomings of the physical.

I want all these devices in my body powered by the food that I eat, so I could consume a few extra hundred calories a day and feed my virtual self by way of the physical.

Maybe all this sounds insane. I’m sure that there are people who would be purists, not want so much technology built into their own body. But I know there are others who feel the same as me.

I understand this type of technology is years and years away. It’ probable that I won’t see it in my lifetime, and even if I did, it would be prohibitively expensive. But the strange thing is: the iPhone is the first glimmer of it, even seen far away in the distance.

But it’s only a glimmer, serving to remind me of what I wish it were. That’s why it disappoints me.

I am a person split between two worlds. I want them drawn together.

For right now, though, I’d settle for being able to run applications in the background.