Not often I'll steal post something wholesale from Warren's blog, but this one made me think... probably more than it should do:

Instrumentation
I discovered today that, through the very good technology house Expansys, an unlocked iPhone 3GS costs pretty much a thousand pounds per unit.

Which is a bit strong for something that only learned how to do MMS five minutes ago. But.

A thousand pounds per unit actually forces you to recontextualise the iPhone a bit. That’s not a mainstream consumer street device anymore. That’s a digital instrument. That is something very different from a mobile phone. That’s something you don’t dare carry around in your pocket because it costs a thousand pounds. And if you do carry such a thing around in your pocket, you are either a wilfully conspicuous consumer of a piece with the people who used to lug mobile phones around when they came in briefcases or you are some kind of scientist performing science on the street with a digital instrument or else why would you be carrying around a device that costs a thousand pounds per unit?

Perhaps iPhone 3GS users need a bumper sticker for the backs of their instruments that reads IT’S OKAY: I’M DOING SCIENCE.