You can blame Apple, too. Not for selling you out, but for selling a phone that's ideal for advertising. One commentator says that video content is the fastest-growing segment in mobile advertising precisely because of the iPhone's big screen, high-quality video and popularity. The 3G version won't help matters.
You can count on Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to try to clobber each other in the mobile advertising space. In fact, to varying degrees, these giants are all betting the future of their companies on monetizing your mobile phone.
I'm not saying that companies are evil, or trying to do you harm. In fact, many are working hard to establish responsible, sane policies for how mobile advertising is conducted.
Harris Interactive advises that "consumers will accept mobile advertising if there is a pay-off/value proposition; the ads are relevant; [users] control what they get and how they are profiled; and they may share and be willing to receive ads." But this was the advice long ago about e-mail ads, and we know how that turned out. The difference this time is that mobile phone ads will actively interrupt you no matter where you are.
The Mobile Marketing Association publishes guidelines, which most reputable companies will adhere to. Disreputable companies from all over the world will ignore them. Regardless, the trickle will turn into a tidal wave.
The problem isn't that somebody out there is looking for innovative ways to leverage your mobile phone to sell you something. The problem is that everybody is doing it. The result will turn your mobile phone into an annoying, interrupting, commercial idiot box that combines all the worst qualities of TV, telemarketing and spam.
Like the Santorinians, we have nowhere to go. The disaster is coming, and there's not much any of us can do about it other than reward companies that don't engage in mobile phone advertising, punish those that do and hope for the best.