The Changing Face Of Mobile Etiquette
by Ewan Spence
Good news! Readers in Glasgow will be the first in the UK able to use their mobile phone and get a signal on their metro. The Glasgow Underground is on course to deploy a combined Wi-Fi and 2G/3G service by this February. It should be noted that coverage, as yet, is only for the stations, and not in the tunnels between the stations.
But already I can hear the cries and howls of protest as ‘the last bastion of peace and quiet is breached,’ or similar sentiments (cf MocoNews’ “is nothing sacredâ€). You know, we’ve been here before. Go right back to the invention of the telephone and it has been slowly moving into more public spaces. Take the start of the 80’s, you would not have walked out on the street to make a call, where everyone could hear your side of the conversation. Nowadays that’s a common occurrence.
As technology has changed, so has social acceptance. We’re seeing it in the field not just of mobile communication (for example are we at the point where it is polite to at least read an SMS at dinner, if not quite the done thing to take the time to reply?) but in all areas of the internet – the most obvious change is the attitude towards copyright and the rewarding of artists but more and more steps in mobile phone etiquette are under way. The next big area, I feel, is in airline travel – and with Air France to start trials of its in-flight call system in the first half of 2008 the airline cabin during flight could be the next step.
Does this all matter though? Are those people who are crying Cassandra at the changes doing the right thing, relics of a more polite past, or will they come around when the rest of the crowd is doing it?
