The tree that no one heard falling.
Almost a week since my mom's flight to the Philippines, I encounter this article from the New York Times about the U.S.'s (and, by extension, North America's) policy on in-flight cellphone use.
I remember texting her Friday night as we, on land - via Facebook and Twitter, caught wind of the devastation that Hurricane Ketsana was causing Manila that Saturday morning (plus six hours, remember), which is where she was bound.
The texts were received after landing at NAIA airport. It was a tad late, for me, who very concernedly warned her to book a hotel nearby due to massive floods on the road; but not too, too late for her, who thought about this after landing anyway.
But what of other concerns 30,000 feet above sea level.
The use of cellphones in flight is ultimately vetoed by airlines (aviation and telecommunication agencies, like the the U.S.'s Federal Aviation Administration and Federal Communications Commission, side with - and influence - legislation, but enforcement ultimately falls on the airline companies themselves). Until recently, the technical concerns were: (from an aviation standpoint) navigational interference, which I completely get (shut it off if you don't want to die), and (from a telecommunications standpoint) ground signal pickup, which I also get (in my past life, I payed over $200 in "international roaming charges" because the local coffee shop I frequented in Windsor, Canada sat dangerously in front of Detroit, U.S.A.). I so get it.
But there have been engineering innovations that address these concerns, and, as Joe Sharkey reports in his article, "cellphones can be used on more than 15,000 flights a month" - international flights, that is. Royal Jordanian Airlines and Euro-discount carrier, Ryanair, have OnAir, one of two leading in flight cellphone and Wi-Fi carriers (Emirates is with AeroMobile), and Kingfisher Airlines, British Airways and Hong Kong Airlines are set to follow this trend.
So we go to the other concern at hand which, I think, fuels the impetus for the lag: social acceptance.
Is it possible that (North) Americans just have a lower tolerance for pedestrian conversation? It's an issue that has oscillated long enough in water cooler conversations and double standard.
It's not just in commercial flights. Pick a phone up in a public transit and you are bound to get at least one glare within a half-mater radius (and it's usually from that cross-legged, old lady - hand bag on her lap, coiffed hair and all - who looks the other way when you look back at her). But do this in a cab and there's no push-back (the status quo has actually backfired with more cab drivers arresting their transient passengers in their personal, albeit foreign, mobile conversation). Online blog communities have found refuge in sharing all forms of cringe-worthy side-talk (take a peek at Overheard in New York and tell me what that hipster said on 50th was not hilarious).
It's not just the vulgar and the mind-boggling (to the guy sitting next to me on the bus this morning: You take what with your coffee?!?!) that's in question; in fact, I don't think it's actually about the lurid conversation that's happening next to us that's really what's annoying about the situation, so much as the lurid conversation reaching us that's the real point of contention.
Case in point (and the classic philo question): if a tree fell in the forest and you weren't there to see it, did it really happen?
I say allow the tree to fall silently - text messaging, e-mail and chat - and it will seem as if nothing had happened.
