France offers "zen-zones" on its high-speed trains, Vienna just ordered public transit users to keep the phone on silent, and more and more U.S. states are banning cell phone use while driving.
Emirates Airlines, though, is giving obsessive communicators another place to gab: coach. Beginning in March, the airline rolled out technology designed to let users operate cell phones at low enough levels to avoid completely futzing up the plane's navigation and ending the conference call with a bang.
Now in the U.S., we look at the Arab world and say, "You can take your excessive freedoms and shove it. We're on a banning spree."
It's not a part of the constant cancer/no-cancer debate over cell phones. (They cause tumors! No they don't! Okay, but they make us all wrinkly and unattractive!)
No, members of Congress are stepping up to the plate and swatting the idea of combining cell phones and Concordes out of the park because, well: "The public doesn't want to be subjected to people talking on their cell phones on an already over-packed airplane," said Rep. Peter DeFazio.
That's right. Cell phones annoy the hell out us and make us uglier!
The Halting Airplane Noise to Give Us Peace
(or "HANG UP"--HA!) act would preemptively strike at "in-flight voice communication" to "ensure that financially strapped airlines don’t drive us towards this noisome disruption in search of further revenue," explained DeFazio.
Before you recycle that phone, though, I suggest we look at the ideas proposed by a group of artist's at the MOMA's Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit: phones that shock users proportional to their volume? Yes, yes, and more yes.
More technology + less legislation = awesome flights.
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