Vapourware, Vapour-Wear, and Vapour Where?

Vapourware [vaporware] is, according to dictionary.com: “Computer Slang. a product, esp. software, that is promoted or marketed while it is still in development and that may never be produced.” We may just have seen the first reported instance of VR hardware vapourware.

Law.com Legal Technology reports, under a posting captioned “Is That Your Phone or Your Imagination?” that

“Many mobile phone addicts and BlackBerry junkies report feeling vibrations as if they’re wearing a cell phone when they’re not.”

Law.com also reports, in the same piece, that

 Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams wrote on his blog, dilbert.org, that he feels the phantom vibrations, “about 10 times per day” and thinks “‘Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!’ So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s OK because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.

Perhaps Scott needs to get a hold of himself (more often) so to speak.

Has anybody considered the prospect that this is somehow connected to 2nd Life or other VR communities? Maybe what these folk are feeling, hearing, ‘whatevering’ are their 2nd Life PCDs somehow escaping their virtual domains? Who here recalls the classic “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes“? I need say no more.

Or maybe it’s a more mundane issue. Maybe, as Law.com reports, it’s all in the users’ heads. What we’re seeing the equivalent of the DTs, the shakes, the 2 a.m. munchies craving. Twinkies, anybody?