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CELLPHONES
May 30, 2009
Rev: May 27, 2012
An old classic with me,
the anti-cellphone rant, From a version posted to
in summary: alt.gothic, based on many a
half-remembered report in the
popular press.
People who talk on them
irritate everyone around
them. I remember seeing a study demonstrating
that overheard conversations are more
annoying if you can only hear one side.
Thankfully, this point seems to
have sunk in, and an ettiquette Some people refuse to
has evolved to minimize this. get the word, though:
"... we're *building
a team to leverage our
They don't work terribly core competency and get
well as phones-- sound in on the ground floor
quality is frequently so in the educational
choppy and garbled that a video market ... "
simple message can take
twenty minutes to get Hence, texting Cellphone jammers
across. has caught on, made the top-10 in
even in the US. the google zeitgeist
recently.
The messages they're used for
typically aren't necessary--
people are nervously checking Without the cellphone,
each other's movements, you'd just make the date,
confirming and re-confirming and you'd all just be there
plans. or not-- with it, everyone
stalls on settling on a
plan, and then feels free
to change it at any point.
When people started carrying I pointed this out to a 20-ish
cellphones, they praised them person recently. He seemed
for letting them get out of the stunned and amazed, very
office, but that's wrong: they intrigued at the thought of
will never be out of the office a world where you'd just say
again, for the rest of their "meet me at the bar at seven".
lives: it will follow them
around wherever they go.
Ubiquitous cell phones are becoming
the defacto standard for emergency
communications, with pay phones (or
any sort of police call box or manual
fire alarms) falling into disrepair--
But cell phones actually don't work
all that well, even for emergency
purposes (certainly, they're easily The presumption that you
overwhelmed in large-scale emergencies). need to pay regular fees
to a cell phone company
to be a real citizen is
disturbing.
MORE_OR_LESS
Cellphones are dangerously distracting to
a level that people to this day still
refuse to credit-- talking on a cell phone
while driving is "as dangerous as drunk The laws against driving with a
driving", but like drunk driving, the hand-held phone are the kind of
drunk always thinks they're good at it, "anti-cellphone" rules only a
and it's just those other drunks you need cellphone company could love: they
to worry about. encouraged people to buy new
equipment without actually
restricting use, though what the
studies actually show is that
*talking on the phone* is severely
distracting, it has nothing to do
with tying up one hand.
And the cops can't
be bothered to enforce
these laws, anyway.
For many people, it's pretty clear that
cellphones are an addictive technology--
they act like their identities are
going to evaporate if they spend a few
minutes without talking to someone;
They go staggering around in public
with eyes glazed over.
I'm skipping the fear that
brain damage may be induced
by the microwave radiation
that cellphones emit, on the
assumption that the more
recent reports are correct,
and the early warnings were
baseless.
It is, however, a telling point
that *absolutely no one* wanted
to hear those early warnings--
there were researchers who
claimed they had rat data showing
damage to 2% of all brain cells.
If factoids like that were floating
around about nuclear power plants,
people would still be repeating them,
and any attempts at retracting them
would be dismissed as industry
propaganda.
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