Click to View

It is something most mobile e-mail addicts, especially those with BlackBerrys, are familiar with. You think your BlackBerry vibrated or alerted you to something, only to discover it did not. Well, the concept made an AP story today.

Although there’s little research in the area of false phone alerts, the phenomena is so common it has two nicknames: ringaiety or fauxcellarm.

Responses from those this has happened to run the gamut from annoyed to happy. One particular BlackBerry owner commented they could sense or “pre-feel” a new message or call and was one with the BlackBerry.

"I'll feel it, look at it. It's not vibrating. Then it starts vibrating," said public relations director Jake Ward to the AP said. "I am one with my BlackBerry."

Switching the regular location of the phone doesn't seem to help. Ward, for example, moved his BlackBerry to his jacket from his hip pocket have a year ago.

The B.J. Fogg, director of research & design at Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab, commented that people feel the phone is part of them and they're not whole without the phone as it connects them to the world. We would rather make a mistake than miss a call.

"As human beings, we're so tapped into our community, responsiveness to what's going on, we're so attuned to the threat of isolation and rejection, we'd rather make a mistake than miss a call," Fogg is quoted as saying. "Our brain is going to be scanning and scanning and scanning to see if we have to respond socially to someone."

Of course, it could just be that our BlackBerrys have us well trained.