I’ve been thinking about ringing phones. Well, more specifically, I’ve been wondering if the phone will always ring in the future. With AOL Instant Messenger, if someone is on my buddy list, the “caller’s” first message will just pop up in the window. How does their new voice chat paradigm work? Does that “ring”? With my always-with-me personal communication device of the future, ideally I will be able to choose how I want incoming communiques to be announced. The two variables would be what I’m doing at the moment (if I’m in an interruptable meeting, I may want my device to vibrate in all cases) and who is calling (if it’s my S.O. and I’m doing work at my desk, I won’t mind getting their voice immediately, if it’s a cold-call recruiter, they should go into voicemail). Of course, if the device itself is intelligent, it could figure that out for me automatically, but I probably wouldn’t mind personalizing most of it myself. There are some technical issues, of course, with having a ringing phone vs. an instant voice come over the wire, but I assume those are just vestiges of old technology paradigms and that the “interrupt method” of the future can be flexible.