Freelance Propaganda

Please don't ring/flash/photograph here!

Orange in the UK has a great ad campaign, “He who does not know silent mode, has no friends”. There are some places where having a phone ring is just not social acceptable—-like classrooms, cinemas and all the places you cringe when one rings.

Similarly we now realize that there are plenty of places where taking a photo is unacceptable—-whether than be flash photograph in art galleries (buy a postcard people!) or phone-cameras in public toilets or changing rooms.

But what one do about these phenomena? Trains in france have “silent carridges” indicated by lovely simple “happy face phone” in the sound proofed gaps between carriages, and “angry” (not sad) faced phones in the carriages themselves.

But these don’t work so well. It often isn’t until your phone rings that you remember that you forgot to turn in onto silent. A bit bloody late.

Everyone has heard of stories of cinema’s blocking cell phone coverage—-a drastic, if often apocraphyl, effort. Now we hear tell of a company that has come up with a “technology” (love the explanatory power of that word) to stop cameras being used in particular locations.

How? Well this is the givaway sentence, “Sensaura and Iceberg Systems are currently in negotiation with the world’s leading mobile handset manufacturers to implement the technology along with blue chip companies, organisations and governments worldwide.” So this grandiose plan involves convincing the equipment manufacturers to build into hardware or software some “turn off’ code.

I have thought for a while that the way to approach this is using bluetooth walk-through zones (like, say, doorways) to send a suggested operation profile to people’s phones. You can then choose whether or not to accept it. This voluntary reminder system is far more likely to achiee the goal of socially acceptable use. Sure, truely boorish people will not accept the profiles. But there has aleays been boors and we’ve lived with that. Voluntary profiles are a lot less risky and icky than having some vendor/manufacturer “beacon” altering the use of my phone/camera.

I’ve often wondered what happens when shielded cinemas are relief centres in crises—-and people can’t use their cellphones, crucial tools in times of crisis.

((I wonder whether appealling to terrorist attacks in arguments will ever be as declasse as referring to Nazi Germany? One can only hope, but till then I’ll indulge)).