Push to Talk
The latest FreshMeat is up, looking at the issue of cell phones on airplanes.
The cell phone continues to be a surprisingly prominent item in our public discourse. The idea of the phone exists on multiple simultaneous fronts:
- a technology platform for multimedia (i.e., camera phones and text messaging)
- an economic booster (ringtones, just the latest flavor in mobile merchandising are big bucks, perhaps even a legit solution to the problem of music sharing)
- a designed accessory that displays economic and social status (or at least aspirations thereof) - check out Bling Kit for cell phones, including Swarovski crystals, the rhinestones of the new millennium
- a performance item to either facilitate or impede social interaction (just when we were beginning to get used to the handsfree users who appear to walk around talking to no one, the New York Times reports on a supposedly emerging behavior where people use their phones to avoid face-to-face interactions, making like they are talking to someone - but are really talking to no one)
- a challenge to unstated but powerful social norms (in one of many examples, a man got out of his car and punched another driver who was talking on his phone instead of moving when the light turned green