The good side is, as you stated, and wonderful! Audio books, your whole library, all your music, everything you own, a flashlight...GPS, camera, etc. It is wonderful. All sitting in your pocket. I work in IT, and the phone is a godsend. I use my camera, calculators, various utility applications, and flashlight multiple times every day. And using something like an astronomical program, to make sense out of all those things in the sky, what was that bird you saw...etc. Just astounding.
But I believe there is a bad side. This picture sums it up:
And this one:
I was on a plane a while back, and some woman was having a loud argument with a flight attendant. I became aware that there was a forest of cell phones, held up above seat backs, recording it. As I looked forward towards the loud voices, I could see this swarm of rectangles, each displaying a small video screen showing the same event taking place. There was something I found infinitely creepy about that.
There is a generation of people now who have never seen many wonderful things with their own eyes. They only see things framed through the video capture screen of their phone. They didn't see their kid graduate, their phone did. They didn't see that concert with their own eyes. They didn't see that party, they saw a video.
I love technology, but there is something that is very narcissistically creepy about all this, especially (in my opinion) things like Facebook. Sure, I am a codger, but of all the people in my circle of life, I was the one who was first onboard with this stuff. First computer, first digital camera, first CD player, first digital music player, I had a Newton (three of them)...but when cell phones made it big...I just stopped there. I was the last one to get a cell phone, and when I did get it, it was because it had the list of things you outlined in your post. When the iPhone came out, I was on it for those things. (not to mention that I had been carrying a pager for twenty years, and found I could not use public phones anymore. I used to know where every phone could be found in a five mile radius around where I happened to be at any time, because I had to be able to respond. But one by one, those phones disappeared and stopped working.)
I love technology. I am no Luddite.
But with the cell phone technology...I won't have my face in it during a meal, or when I am with another person. I won't use it in a restaurant or public setting, even on a train. If I have to take a call or make one, I excuse myself and leave to go somewhere I can be alone. I do listen to music and audiobooks nearly constantly, but...I make sure that, in the right situations, I pull my Bose sound canceling buds out so I can hear what should be heard. After all, if you are lying in a hammock and it is pouring rain, why waste it by listening to music?
I don't often frivolously call or text people, and if someone calls or texts me, and I don't want to answer...I don't. But the problem I see is, there are a lot of people who are ruled by the technology.