I recently went through a pretty awkward break-up…with my cell phone. The Sprint Katana and I started out as casual friends, just making local calls and exchanging the occasional text message. She was a simple phone; I was a simple boy; and we liked our arrangement. But after I stared seeing a Garmin GPS device, my Katana unexpectedly offered to link up with us simultaneously-in accordance with the new hands-free driving law, of course. It was pretty awesome, and we stayed safe by using Bluetooth.

Katana and I got pretty hot and heavy after that; we even upgraded to an unlimited text messaging plan to accommodate our burgeoning passion. Alas, as is the case in most doomed relationships, we took each other for granted. Familiarity turned into resentment. I dropped and tossed Katana around with abandon and she retaliated by dropping my calls. By the end, she wouldn’t even let me access my own voicemail. Our satellites of love would never quite triangulate again.

So, I got back into the game and allowed myself to look at some younger, sexier phones that just recently became available. When I am in a relationship, I am definitely a one handset man, so I didn’t even realize the possibilities that had just arrived on the phone scene. I went onto some of the bigger matchmaking sites (CNet, mostly) and found the following most popular ads:

Contessa Crackberry (AKA Blackberry Curve) – Sleek, Type-A phone searches for organized and motivated user to share in personal, financial, and social success. And when Contessa searches for something, she gets what she wants! I will keep you in constant connection with your business associates so you can stay ahead of the pack. Not a great sense of direction, but you should know exactly where you are headed anyway. Likes: brevity and ambition. Dislikes: ambivalence, cheapskates, and guys with big thumbs.

I was impressed by how well Contessa manages all of my information with her constant connectivity, but she seemed a little high maintenance ($325 just to start dating) and uptight for a laid-back guy like me. And her GPS skills stink. So, I moved along.

Ivanna Iphone (AKA Apple iPhone) – Very young, very beautiful phone looking for someone who is easy going and appreciative of aesthetics. I am super adaptable, very web saavy, and totally hands on. Would love to hang out, but I am looking for one thing only: LONG TERM COMMITMENT. I used to have very expensive tastes, but I have toned down a little bit. If you want the best, you’ll see that I should be the apple of your eye.

Whoa…I am only twenty-two years old. Ivanna wants to settle down immediately, with at least a year contract. Plus, her stepfather Alan AT&T and I don’t get along very well. Even though she is gorgeous, I had to turn her down.

She did manage to get me to go on a blind date with her Sidekick named Sabrina (T Mobile’s Sidekick), but she turned out to be even more superficial than Ivanna. She kept flipping up her screen at me and bragging about the celebrities and athletes she hangs out with.

Then there is Anna Android-the mysterious girl of my dreams. After she got profiled in Wired’s June issue, she has been the talk of the town. She isn’t like other phones. In fact, she isn’t a phone at all. She is the new open source operating system being developed by Google, and people treat her like the newest tabloid sensation: everyone sings her praises when she is around and cuts her down with envious speculations behind her back. She’s the system that all of your friends’ phones love to hang out with, the popular and sexy girl with a hundred talents who still manages to be down to earth and accessible.

She is the phone system I can see myself changing my ways for, getting old with, trying new and exciting applications with. She could change my life.

But, the perfect girl always seems far too far away. I am currently seeing a Sprint Instinct on a trial basis. She is much prettier and entertaining than Katana, and I am very happy. But as long as Ms. Android is on the horizon, it may be hard to remain faithful in the future. You can’t always get what you want; but sometimes, you just might find the phone and web service that you need.

In March of 2007, media giant Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube in response to the very common practice of users uploading copyrighted television shows. Around the same time, comedian Demetri Martin lampooned the lawsuit on The Daily Show with hilarious postmodern poignancy. As the show’s resident “youth correspondent,” he ironically and perfectly summed up how young people view streaming video content on the internet.

“The only thing I like better than watching a TV show is watching it smaller and blurrier,” Martin exclaims in the video. “What’s next? Are we gonna have to start paying for music, too?”

My current demographic — Men 18-34 — first experienced free copyrighted content after the serendipitous marriage of two technologies in the late 90s: peer-to-peer internet file sharing (read: Napster, Kazaa, etc.) and rewritable CD drives. Suddenly, young people learned, through friends and experimentation, how to navigate the 21st century bootleg market with amazing ease and efficiency. Anyone familiar with a PC could make a free mix CD of their favorite songs, while more tech savvy teens obtained new albums and movies sometimes months before they saw wide release. The sphincters of RIAA and MPAA officials across the country tightened at an alarming and unprecedented rate.

Even as we grew up and got hit with litigation in our college dorm rooms, the vast majority of users still flippantly dismissed, and continue to dismiss, control efforts by parent companies the way that Martin does in his segment. The whole situation is funny because young people realize these implacable facts: entertainment consumption has changed, the new technologies are here to stay, and media companies have to evolve.

Many major companies like ABC and Showtime have slowly accepted and adapted to the paradigm shift by allowing select content to be seen on their websites. CBS did an excellent job providing streaming coverage of this year’s NCAA basketball tournament with their “Madness On Demand” service, and ABC even plans to offer shows in high definition. These major concessions, paired with the proliferation of popular streaming media sites directed specifically at television and movies like Joost and Hulu, beg the following question: will television as we know it die like the dinosaurs?

Speaking as both a “youth” and as a correspondent, the future of our TV and movie consumption hinges on the balance between two very simple aspects of viewing: quality and expediency. When people my age watch video on the internet, we sacrifice a lot of quality for an even higher level of convenience.

If someone tells you about a show, and you can count on the Web for that show’s whole first season on your computer literally two minutes after typing in its name on Google. A cheap college student will always be willing to wait out a couple ads-or dodge some spyware downloads-as long as the content they reach is legit and they don’t have to pay for it.

However, as long as guys have the time and equipment to watch the game or the babes and explosions of Sin City in glorious HD, then television as we now know it will live on at least a little longer. Computer hardware simply hasn’t caught up to plasma televisions in that respect. Video on Demand services offer HD quality and one-click expediency, but their “pay to play” business model sends most of My Generation back to their laptops. Most guys I know will shell out for a sweet entertainment system and some choice DVD’s, but they are less likely to pay for VOD on their TVs.

Once television proper or the Internet manages to maximize both of those all-important aspects, we will see a real change in how we watch the boob tube.