Talking of mobile phone usage on transport services and too much social network information, I’m still trying to make sense of this snippet of mobile phone conversation that I overheard on bus the other day:
As soon I get home I’ll get onto Facebook and sort this mess out. No I can’t right now, I’m on the bus, it’ll have to wait until i get in. No, I won’t be home for another 20 minutes at least. And the computer takes five minutes to warm up, so we’re looking at 30 minutes before I can do anything.
I for one certainly hope they sorted out whatever pressing Facebook issue was at hand…
(Before I stopped riding the bus due to poor route management) I’ve written about use of mobiles on transit. This, as well as general trends, lead me to find that conversation odd.
Not that they had a facebook crisis, but that they had a conversation at all. I see lots of mobile use, and some laptop, and lots of music players… but hardly a phone call at all.
I feel this is how aircraft use would be, and tend to say that’s a reasonable way to mandate it; just like you can play your music and movies (over 10,000 ft.) but better keep the sound to yourself, just allow mobiles, but for SMS, web, email, etc. You can even listen to voicemail over the headset for all we care, but if you start talking, you’ll get a conversation with the flight attendant instead.
Actually I’m all for web access on flights, but I think it would be difficult to enforce a “non-verbal use only” of phones. I could see determined types arguing with such a policy.