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The Cell Phone Has Changed — New Etiquette Needed
CWmike writes to share a recent manners-rant that has some great gems about how not to be "that guy" on a cell phone. What rules of engagement are absolutely necessary and what social penalties should become standard practice for repeat offenders? "It's easy to be rude with a cell phone. A visitor from another planet might conclude that rudeness is a cell phone's main purpose. Random, annoying ring tones go off unexpectedly. People talk too loudly on cell phones in public because of the challenge of holding a conversation in a noisy environment with someone who's not present. Cell phones need their own rules of etiquette, or we'll descend into social barbarism."
1. It is NOT rude to talk on your cell phone in a public place eg on a train or bus or w/e. just like how it isnt rude to have a conversation with a real person there. It pisses me off that on some busses I take they say "please dont use cellphones, it may disturb others" when it doesnt say "people dont talk, it may disturb others". in fact, on a phone there's less talking to be disturbed bya s thre's only 1/2 the conversation.
I find it easier to justify it if you put it that people can't seem to *walk* and talk at the same time. Walking is something that doesn't require much mental effort, yet people are continually running into things (and other people). Funny enough that people can seem to walk and talk to someone beside them just fine, but give them a cell, and accidents galore (thankfully rarely fatal or injurious unless one walks into a manhole or something). And this is something people do naturally, and now we want to put them in a two-ton vehicle where the outcome is easily death.
OTOH, I wonder if pickpocketing is on the rise these days - with so many distracted pedestrians, you'd think a downtown core would make a target rich environment for people stealing wallets and such.
Hell, I've always wanted to grab a digital camera, and when I see people so engrossed with their cellphone texting, snapping a picture and starting a website about it.
While taking the bus to work, I endured about 10 minutes of non-stop, high-volume chatter about matters far too intimate for public exhibition. I finally reached my limit...couldn't concentrate to read, had forgotten my headphones, couldn't ignore the conversation (which was carried on at a near-shout). The offender was clearly a Jerry Springer fugitive, and if she wasn't a star of that People of WalMart site, her attire was such that it's only a matter of time. The faces of the other transit riders made it obvious I wasn't the only one offended by a conversation that included the woman's current sex life, how she enjoyed suckering her sister into babysitting so she could go clubbing, and some lovely racial stereotyping about her child's absentee father.
I pulled out my cell phone and began to carry on a fake conversation about the woman. I'll admit that I was pretty far over the top, but I was also seriously pissed. The other riders caught on pretty fast and started laughing. For at least a couple of minutes the woman was oblivious. Gradually, though, it sunk in...I think it was when I mentioned how lucky she was that the bus came along before that Inuit with a harpoon caught up with her.
She wound up cursing at me, but that was fine. A lot of people were laughing at her, which was exactly what I had in mind. She got off the bus pretty quickly after that. I don't know if it was her stop; I hope not.
I wouldn't recommend this course of action except under ideal circumstances, but I don't regret it.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Back in the winter of 1999 the Irish GSM network Eircell first allowed prepaid users to send SMS - they were free to send and receive and very few people especially my age didn't have phones at the time. Most people switched their phones off at night to save battery or whatever so as long as you weren't deliberately trying to piss someone off you could text who you liked, when you liked. It was mostly just a bit of fun, a new and unusual method to communicate with fellow GSM handset owners.
But its no longer the case, texting has become a more widespread method of communication and therefore more formal. Especially since about 2006/7 when everybody started moving to Facebook with private profile, switched off Bluetooth and basically refused to talk to randomers anymore due to their paranoia.
Now if I meet a girl there is a perfect interval I have to wait
1. Before sending the first text
2. Before replying to a text
3. Before sending a second text after no reply (much longer)
4. Random 'padding' time in addition to these. A constant delay = freaky/stalker-ish
There is also the number of texts I can send without reply before I have to assume she wants absolutely nothing to do with me anymore ever or risk being publicly denounced as a stalker/rapist type person. (usually only 2 or 3)
Before I could send someone a text and they would get it when they are available and have their phone switched on. Now if I wake up at 4am and think of something I have to tell them I have to use a PyS60 script to schedule the text to be sent at a sociable time. Otherwise the person will go around saying "omg, he sent me a text at 4am!!! the crazy stalker, he is awake and thinking about me at 4am! how obsessive! lets call cops now pls kthbai!"
Voice calls are not immune either - I cant call someone out of the blue for a chat, before I could but now they assume there is something wrong with me if I do that. In the early 00's I could call people and talk about an hour and they'd think nothing of it. Now its common to text before call
When you send a text there is also risk that someone wishing to stir up some drama can isolate that particular text from the rest of the conversation and try to pass you off as a bad person.
In 1948 Robert Heinlein wrote a story called Space Cadet. Early in the story the protagonist is lining for something and his mobile phone rings. He answers the call. Its his dad asking about something but he ends the call saying can't talk now I am in a crowd. You know RAH was a pretty good futurist and got a lot of technical things right, but some things wrong too. Few people today would end a mobile phone call because there were other people around.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Music as a ring tone...
Also, if you have any kind of music as your ringtone (except for the harp sound on the iPhone) you should be shot. A phone should sound like a phone, not a disco.
Actually, the first day we (all Apple employees at the time)m got our iPhones, we immediately hacked different ring tones onto them. Like less than an hour after we had them. With only the 25 original ring tones and a cafeteria that holds 1600 people, well you do the birthday paradox math.
-- Terry
This is probably especially true in terms of the Slashdot crowd. When you get a call from your boss/coworker/client/relative/friend who has some major computer catastrophe they will be relieved to have gotten through to you and usually blurt out their issue about as frantic as they possibly can. It usually isn't "Hello. I'm having a problem. Do you have a moment?" It is usually "THANK FUCKING GOD YOU ANSWERED MY PRINTER DOESN'T WORK AND IT WORKED THIS MORNING AND I NEED TO GET THESE REPORTS OUT AND I TRIED REBOOTING MY PROCESSOR AND DELETING MY PRINT DRIVER AND CHANGING THE INK IN THE PRINTER AND IT STILL ISN'T WORKING"
Naturally, trying to parse information being delivered that way is going to be pretty distracting. I usually don't get people I am walking with go into that kind of frantic mode.
Only because no one writes down as the cause of an accident things like:
'jamming out to the radio'
'not paying attention to the road because I was looking at the girl walking down the side of the road'
'talking to my passenger'
and a handful of other things that are really the same problem just different manifestations.
The problem being the driver shouldn't be driving because they can't prioritize the situation and they stop focusing on driving.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The other person in the car is, well, in the car. They will notice the same dangers you will, and will start to fear for their own safety if you are too distracted.
Yeah, I read an article about a study (can't find it) where they basically had two people talking about a set topic while one of them was driving. Sometimes the non-driver was riding shotgun, and sometimes the driver was talking to him via a bluetooth headset. Like many of these studies, they found that talking on the cellphone was more dangerous.
According to the article, the researchers observed that when the driver encountered some sort of obstacle or tricky situation, the guy riding shotgun would generally notice the obstacle and shut up on his own. The non-driver on the cell phone wouldn't see the obstacle and would continue talking.
The researchers hypothesized that, because the cell phone caller continued talking, the drivers attention was split and his reactions were delayed. Even if the driver stopped the caller from talking by saying something like "hold on a second...." as soon as he noticed the obstacle, it meant that there was a significant delay while the driver subconsciously prioritized how much attention to give to the caller vs. the road, made a decision on how to react to the caller, and then say "hold on a second."
Go talk on a conventional, passive landline phone, sometime. Foldback into the earpiece is an integral part of that technology, and it works: You can hear if you're distorted or scratchy, or muffled because you've positioned things wrongly, and if you can't hear yourself at all due to background noise you know you might want to speak up because they can't hear you, either.
It's all psychological. And people talking on the phone just want the other party to hear them clearly -- I cannot believe that they're all just purposeless loudspeaking assholes. But without any way for them to hear how they themselves sound, it's a crapshoot that's easiest won by just talking louder.
Kid-proof tablet..
A standard method for testing the effect of alcohol on reaction time is setting up a chalk 'gun' on the rear bumper of a car and having a driver drive it around a closed course at a fixed speed. The chalk gun fires one pellet at the ground at a randomly determined time; as soon as the driver hits the brake pedal the gun fires a second pellet. You measure the distance between the two chalk spots on the road to get reaction time. You do it several times before alcohol as a control and several times after having a few drinks. It's a great test for those people who claim they're better drivers after a couple of beers, because it inevitably shows a reduced reaction time.
I always wanted to see this reproduced with a cellphone involved instead of alcohol. Especially for my wife, who claims that she's still a good driver while on the cellphone.
Whole generations where not be able to call each other when they were driving. As nice it is to be able to contact someone all the time, when I am in a car, I just don't pick up the phone at all.
Same when I am in the train, or on the bus, or in a restaurant.
But that is because I am in Japan, and people still know how to behave when they get a phone call.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
My preferred solution is to have tiered licenses. Bronze would get you econoboxes, lowered speed limits, and higher insurance costs. Silver would get standard cars and normal traffic laws and insurance costs, while Gold would give access to sports cars, lower insurance costs, and perhaps give an extra 10% on the motorway speed limit (not the city speed limit, of course). Each would require progressively more training and more frequent re-testing intervals.
The question is then how you would check that the Porsche barreling down the outside lane is actually being driven by a Gold-standard driver and not a Bronze-licensed script kiddy who r007ed his daddy's car's firmware...
This already exists to a point in Italy, where newly-licensed drivers are restricted to smaller engine capacities and lowered speed limits for three years. ISTR that there are also stiffer penalties for speeding and perhaps other offences. The enforcement problem, however, is similar: short of stopping every car not legal for new drivers, it's hard to enforce.
" There is a rational explanation for everything. There is also an irrational one. "