Virtual reality so realistic that it looks just like video. A phone in a watch, so you can feel guilty for the calls you don't have time to make. A square of plastic the size of a Visa Card that receives silent instructions and programs while the owner carries it around. If your smart card gets updated without you being aware, are you even impressed?

It's all become so routine. Portable phones with built-in computers and fax machines, so you can spend all of your time at the office. Wireless banking. Computerized shopping, so you don't have to leave home to wander the produce aisle. While you are waiting for your groceries, you can talk to your toaster.

"See those lights along the rooftop?" asks an engineer working a few feet from a computerized van. "Watch this."

The lights on the rear of the van begin flashing.

"I just sent a command via satellite," the engineer grins.

It is not any single leap of the imagination that makes CeBIT so absorbing, but the range of applications that are changing the way we do ordinary things. We have become a digital -- and increasingly, wireless -- society, with chips and sensors embedded in nearly everything we use: a sensor in the clothing that attracts you at the mall, but trips an alarm if someone tries to swipe it. A browser in your pickup truck. Small portable devices that buy you a coke, or play you a tune on the jukebox, while downloading books or bureaucratic email or phone messages. A phone that rings in your pocket on a remote mountain path.

You are not alone. Even when you want to be.

-- Janice Castro