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or Hell phones? |
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Are we developing ethics
to govern their public use?
of TheColumnists.com
Why are we so bothered by people talking on cell phones?
We are annoyed, to put it mildly. You’re riding on a bus, or you’re in a restaurant and someone is talking on a cell phone. Instant dislike.
Cell phones are wonderful instruments. They allow us to stay in communication with one another much more easily, they speed commerce, they increase worker productivity, they are convenient and are very helpful in emergencies. They seem to be getting more powerful, more useful, smaller and handier every week.
Having a cell phone and talking on it used to be a status symbol a decade or so ago. But the novelty is long gone and the resentment grows. Just as it is no longer socially permissible to spit on the sidewalk or smoke in the library, using a cell phone now is best done when no one is looking. Many restaurants have signs up asking patrons to please not use their cell phones while dining. Legislation has been passed in New York forbidding use of a cell phone while driving.
Now that the Gee-Whiz factor has worn off, people who use cell phones in many public places are starting to be lumped in with cigarette smokers--people who have a nasty habit they should get rid of, if they had any gumption. Until that happy day they should be shunted off somewhere to indulge in their weakness out of sight of the rest of us.
The worst cell phone offenders are those who have no faith in the miracles of electronics and feel they have to TALK VERY LOUDLY to make themselves heard. The sight of someone shouting inanities while sitting at a restaurant table is enough to start fellow diners on a search for a baseball bat.
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Since it is part of their job description to display bad taste, teenagers have taken to cell phones like televangelists to money. They talk all the time, everywhere. Some high schools have tried to stem the tide by forbidding cell phones on campus, but teenagers and their parents have pointed to the phones’ handiness in case of emergency. So phonephobics have a consistent source of annoyance.
Is it a question of invading our space, like a boom box? Perhaps. I think our attitude toward cell phones stems from a variety of that--resentment over a conversation going on right in front of us without including us, even if we don’t want to be included. It’s like sitting in a room while two strangers conduct an animated conversation while ignoring you. Illogically, you feel slighted, even if you don’t give a hoot about the relative merits of Jason vs. Christopher as a date, or whether Millstone is going to get the plywood to the job site on time. It’s impolite to ignore a third person, and this idiot with the cell phone is doing just that. Even if you want to be ignored.
Moreover, your space is being invaded because a conversation going on four feet away is distracting, no matter how inane it is. We resent having even a small portion of our attention commandeered by others, even unconsciously, when we would prefer not to give it to them.
Is there a solution? Well, phones now come equipped with the ability to exchange text messages. Seeing someone in the seat next to you quietly reading a message on the tiny screen doesn’t usually trigger homicidal urges. Secondly, society’s rules for when and where it is permissible for civilized people to talk out loud into a cell phone are beginning to jell, and that is helpful. You don’t do it in a restaurant, you don’t do it sitting at a conference table, you don’t do it when you’re sitting in someone’s office, it’s OK to do it almost anywhere public at an airport, and so on.
Just as it has many times over the centuries, social mores move like all-encompassing amoebas to wrap themselves around and deal with new phenomena. So with the usual exceptions by jerks, it’s probably going to be all right in a few years. We’ll have a set of (almost) universally observed rules.
Good thing, too. Otherwise, we should all be looking for baseball bats.
© 2002 by Charles
M. McFadden. The McFadden caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel.
The other illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection,
1895 Francisco Blvd., E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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