We're Already Living in Cell Hell

By JOSHUA QUITTNER

You probably saw the story recently about the trainload of commuters who beat a man to death for talking too loudly on his cell phone. No? Maybe I just imagined it. Still, it could happen--it's getting that tense out there. These cell-phone people are so out of control that I worry about their safety--or would, if I weren't fantasizing about swatting them savagely about the head, shoulders and utility pouch with their obnoxious and nap-destroying phones. There's a guy serving a year in jail in England for refusing to shut up, shut up, SHUT UP for just a few minutes please...during a flight from Madrid to Manchester. Authorities there claimed his mobile's emissions constituted a safety hazard, interfering with air-tower-to-pilot communications. But we know better, don't we? They threw him in the slammer for sweet revenge.

We don't need better cell-phone technology from Finland, or Lapland, or anywhere else. What we need is anti-cell phone technology, to take back the streets (and passenger trains and restaurants and theaters and airplanes) from the cell people before we all go crazy. There must be a gadget in the Sharper Image catalog or somewhere that could negate this nuisance. A cell jammer, say, a pocket-size device that cell haters could carry around and deploy to knock a phone abuser offline. Even better if the device could also transmit into his ear a high-pitched shrieking sound, similar to the one the phone company used to use before informing you that the number you were calling was not in service.

Or perhaps we should fight the problem head on. An extremely potent health argument could be made about the harm this is causing the uncelled in the form of, well, secondhand noise. It makes me very tense to be around someone who's calling the office from the train when he should be napping like the rest of us. My blood pressure goes into the red zone when I hear a cell person honk, "Hello! Wha--? Hello! Are you there? Hello!" especially when I know good and well that they lost their connection five minutes ago, only they haven't shut up long enough to notice. I also find it mortifying when I'm trapped next to some cell guy who's talking to his wife or his girlfriend about intimate matters--just him, his significant other and me. This must cause health troubles.

I say go with the secondhand noise attack. We'll cook up some medical research that "proves" we're at risk. Then we'll find a cell-phoneless lobbyist, should one exist, generate some sympathetic press and maybe get a website ihatecellphones.com is still available). Next we launch a campaign for designated no-cell-phone areas in public places. That's right, put all the cell shouters at tables in the back of the restaurant, near the bathroom or kitchen, where they can sit alone and chatter, gesturing wildly, as if the party to whom they are speaking could see them. Later, after they get good and comfortable with their status as pariahs--instead of power guys--we simply designate all public places no-cell-phone areas. That way they'd have to stand outside, in the rain, with all the smokers who congregate like the bad kids once did in high school. Yeah, that's it: we'll treat them just the way we did the smokers. And that worked, didn't it?

--By Joshua Quittner