Technology fashion faux pas

It's not just whether you have the latest and greatest technology -it's how you wear it that matters.

This morning I pretended to focus on a scone and hot tea in a local bagel shop. But I was actually stealing sidelong glances at a man with a silver woman's brooch pinned to the side of his head. Or was it a Bluetooth headset? The triangular, silver object, about the size of a silver dollar, almost completely covered the man's ear.

What called my attention to the object was the size and shape of the device, which was much larger than other headsets I'd seen before, but also the decidedly low-tech, vintage jewelry look of it.

Mind you, he wasn't using the device: Many Bluetooth headset users never take the head sets off, wearing them all day long like some sort of oversized, gaudy jewelry. Does anyone have the courage to tell these people how foolish they look?

Then there's the ick factor: There's a statistic circulating in the press and online stating that after just one hour of use, a head phone increases bacteria in the ear canal by 700% (While this factoid came up on the NPR show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, I haven't been able to track down a source. I did, however, find this Malaysian study, which seems to dispel the idea that head phone use leads to ear infections. Maybe waxy buildup is OK after all...).

If people aren't going to hang up their Bluetooth headsets when they're not using them then perhaps we need to start treating them like a fashion accessory. Prada should to step in, before we all look like extras in a Star Trek movie and The Borg overtakes civilization as we know it.