The New York Times (registration needed) reports another interesting story about how people use mobile phones.
Consider the case of Lilia Belkova, a passenger earlier this month on a US Airways flight from Miami to Philadelphia. She refused repeated requests by flight attendants to turn off her cellphone so the plane could take off. Hanging up on her caller, she said, would be rude. Things got so out of hand that the plane had to return to the terminal, but not before Ms. Belkova, 38, had slapped a federal air marshal.
She was handcuffed, taken from the plane and arrested on assault charges. She is now being prosecuted.
Sociologically speaking, mobile phones pit the priorities of the “in” group – those on the phone – against those in the “out” group, or people in close proximity to the talkers.
…………..More troubling, it took only a small skip in logic for Ms. Belkova to claim that it was rude to hang up on her friend, even if a planeload of passengers thought otherwise. To academics, this is known as the actor-observer paradox, a theory backed up by studies showing that most Americans think that while other cellphone users are rude, they are not.
Establishing acceptable social norms takes time and seems to lag behind technology adoption to a significant degree. The picture is only going to get worse on the mind bogglingly confusing times ahead.
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