Codfish Press

Wireless Politesse: Give People A Chance To Miss You!

By Greg O’Brien, Codfish Press

My younger brother, a venture capitalist type, was talking at me the other day, a serious conversation about a doctor’s prognosis for my 83-year-old mother, entering the final stages of Alzheimer’s, and my 86-year-old father, who has multiple illnesses with a life expectancy measured in months. Having completed his thoughts on the subject, he asked for my assessment, then seconds later whipped out his new Blackberry to return a corporate e-mail and text message a client.

“WHAAAT?” he asked in denial, “I’m listening to ya!”

Eavesdropping, perhaps, but not listening.

My techno-driven, attention deficit brother is not alone in his wireless transgressions. Millions of individuals routinely interrupt conversations, driving, dinners, meetings, presentations and the like, with wireless etiquette that is, as one observer of the scene calls it, “hugely disgraceful.”

Coast-to-coast, it’s “frustrating and inappropriate,” the president of a Seattle area bank carps in a business journal report.

Many call it an addiction, or a misguided belief that users are more essential than family, friends or colleagues. Expect these collective indiscretions to get worse, much worse, as more state-of-the-art wireless devices come on line. Industry analysts predict that 1 billion mobile phones and related devices will be sold worldwide in the year 2009.

“The decibel (and distraction) level is rising,” writes Joanna Krotz on the subject. “So are the transgression and intrusions — and car accidents.” Notes Robbie Blinkoff, principal anthropologist at Context-Based Research Group in Krotz’s piece, “People are defining new rules and new behavior … Technological change leads to social change.” 

And you can see it coming: “That telltale defocusing of the eyes, that sentence left hanging, that thought sent fleeing,” as Road and Travel magazine laments.

So, how do we deal with such high-tech social change? It is not enough to put your device on vibrate.

Dan Briody, writing in InfoWorld years ago, affirmed “Ten Commandments” of wireless etiquette that still apply today. Among them: “Thou shalt not subject defenseless others to cellphone conversations; thou shalt not set thy ringer to play La Cucaracha every time thy phone rings; thou shalt not wear two wireless devices on thy belt; thou shalt not wear thy earpiece when thou art not on the phone; and thou shalt not try to impress” with thy wireless devices.

Or more simply put, as comedian Jerry Seinfield once said, “Give people a chance to miss you!”