Staying connected 50 years ago meant Walter Cronkite and a rotary dial. Talk about consolidation: Now you can get Katie Couric video on your cell phone.

The already-omniscient Google, which announced last month plans to expand its Pittsburgh office, announced yesterday that it would start selling the Nexus One smartphone for $179 if users commit to a two-year service contract with T-Mobile USA. Bought under a different carrier, the phone costs $529.

The rising costs of staying connected in the 21st century have transformed the Internet and how you connect to it into an arbiter of 2010 living: a symbol of status and a harbinger of a society where information is spread out and even more susceptible to hacking and fraud.

Personal budgets have expanded to keep up: According to a May 2009 Consumer Electronics Association poll, the average U.S. household spent $1,229 per year on electronics products. Not to mention the monthly bills that accompany those gadgets: cable bills can quickly top $100 alone.

By next year, there will be more than 150 million smartphones in the United States, with Blackberry and iPhone models dominating the market, according to The Nielsen Co.

One of the top five sites visited on smartphones: Facebook, the social-networking site that some think is supplanting all socializing, period.

Does that mean people are turning into drones incapable of eye contact?

"Some people will," said Jarice Hanson, author of "24/7: How Cell Phones and the Internet Change the Way We Live, Work, and Play."

By then, that automaton look may be cool.

Look no further than the tabloid treatment of Apple's Steve Jobs or the Google gurus to find nerds who are glamorized in popular culture, she said.

"The nerd is someone who preferred to interact with the technology, and not the people," Dr. Hanson said. "That's considered a marketable skill now."

In fact, the Internet is so commonplace -- really, right in your pocket -- that not being connected is interpreted by some as a new form of disenfranchisement.

Tucked in the Obama administration stimulus package is $7.2 billion allotted to expand broadband access to underserved communities.

"It's become clear that a connection is essential infrastructure, like power and water," said Timothy Karr, who oversees InternetForEveryone.org, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy agency trying to close the "digital divide."

The Commerce and Agriculture departments received more than 2,200 requests for more than $28 billion in aid, more than four times the amount available. There were 130 applications from Pennsylvania.

An October 2007 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development ranked America below most Asian and western European countries for average monthly price and download speed for broadband connections.

"Coming from the place that considers itself the birthplace of the Internet, this is considered a national disgrace," Mr. Karr said.

Mr. Karr called the Internet "an essential tool for participation and access in democracy," as he said, something that's made the First Amendment a "living document."

But it also provides crooks with new ways to overhear your free speech.

In late December, a 28-year-old German engineer announced that he had deciphered and published the algorithm developed in 1988 that still protects 80 percent of all mobile calls in the world. He did so, he said, to highlight flaws in existing security.

According to Carnegie Mellon University professor Lorrie Faith Cranor, there hasn't been a tipping point in American culture yet that demands heightened security for our computers (pocket-size and otherwise).

We still value convenience over safety.

Her example: home burglary systems, which too often rely on quick-footed owners to avoid unnecessary alarms. After a few involuntary mishaps, the owner may just stop turning the alarm on and hope the sticker wards off bandits.

In a similar vein, a cell phone that needs to be unlocked every time it's turned on is considered too inconvenient.

"If you want to make something hard for the bad guys to get into, you usually have to make it harder for the good guys to get into," Dr. Cranor said.

Dr. Cranor said more high-profile security breaches will fuel security innovation, such as a technology that activates your phone after identifying your thumb print. That system already exists outside the United States.

Until then, Dr. Cranor said to remember what a hacker has access to on an unlocked device -- things such as contact lists, personal photos and e-mail folders.

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