Cell Phone Etiquette Articles

There's a lot of them so here goes...

Cell Phones and Incivility

Written in 2000. Discusses the increasing presence of cell phones and the suggested etiquette from an author who wrote a whole book on the topic and a list of rules from Miss Manners.

Tells several extreme stories of "rude" people being inconsiderate of others while talking on their cell phones.

Kupfer, Peter. (2000). Cell Phones and Incivility. SFGate.com. Tuesday, March 28, 2000. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/03/28/BU24853.DTL).

Social Mobiles for IDEO

Designer is hired to create cell phones that modify the user's behavior to make the cell phone use less invasive for those around him or her.

(2009). Social Mobiles for IDEO. October 21, 2009. (http://www.ideo.com/work/print/social-mobiles/).

The World's a Cell-Phone Stage

Discussion of how cell phones are " ... upending social rules and creating a new culture ... " (Kim, 2006). States that cell phones " ... topped the list of inventions people hated the most but can't live without ..." (Kim, 2006).

Major points are the simultaneous joys and frustrations of cell phones. Mentions "bad behavior" of some cell phone users.

Kim, Ryan. (2006). The World's a Cell-Phone Stage. Monday, February 27, 2006. SFGate.com. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/27/BUG2IHECTO1.DTL).

Cell Users Told to Hang It Up

Discusses creation of no cell phone rules in many business and other public places. Cell phones as annoyance.

Seligman, Katherine. (2000). Cell Users Told to Hang It Up. Sunday, April 16. SFGate.com. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=%22cell+users+told+to+hang+it+up%22&period=all&Submit=S).

Cell Phone Etiquette

" ... [T]he cacophony of wireless communications has turned public protocol on its head and unleashed a backlash from bystanders who complain that they're being subjected to not just infernal ringing but also shocking secondhand intimacies, banal chatter and just plain rudeness" (Nakao, 2004).

Wonderfully sensational language. Discussion of etiquette, violations of etiquette and the impacts of both.

Nakao, Annie. (2004). Cell Phone Etiquette. Sunday, August 8, 2004. SFGate.com. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/chroncast/detail?blogid=5&entry_id=3189).

When Courtesy Calls, Few Mobile-Phone Users Answer

"Second-hand cell phone conversations are fast replacing second-hand smoke as public enemy No.1 in crowded venues nationwide" (Oldham, 1999).

Discusses rise of cell phone use and the " ... mobile phone etiquette pioneers, the brave souls who have dared to suggest that being tethered to the world 24 hours a day may not be such a good idea" (Oldham, 1999).

Oldham, Jennifer. When Courtesy Calls, Few Mobile-Phone Users Answer. Monday, July 19, 1999. SFGate.com. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1999/07/19/MN85123.DTL).

Could My iPhone Really Crash My Airplane?

Explains rationale behind airline requirement that cell phones be shut off during flight.

Beam, Christopher. Explainer: Could My iPhone Really Crash My Airplane? Tuesday, March 31, 2009. Slate.com. (http://www.slate.com/id/2215050/).

Can You Fear Me Now?

Sensationalism at its best. Great quotes to use for beefing up the rhetoric in your paper.

Discussion of cell phone use in media. Several movies and books use cell phones as their central tools of horror.

Curtis, Bryan. (2006). Can You Fear Me Now? Wednesday, February 8, 2006. Slate.com.

(http://www.slate.com/id/2135754/).

Driving While Interrogated

Discusses dangers of cell phone use while driving and offers suggestions for public policies to make roads safer for everyone in a cell phone age.

Saletan, William. Human Nature: Driving While Interrogated. Tuesday, July 21, 2009. Slate.com. (http://www.slate.com/id/2223277/).

How Do Cell Phones Reveal Your Location?

Explanation of GPS systems in cell phones.

Koerner, Brendan I. How Do Cell Phones Reveal Your Location? Monday, May 12, 2003. Slate.com. (http://www.slate.com/id/2082828/).

Wayward Puritans

Discussion of Durkheim's view of deviance. That it is normal and even necessary in society. It gives non-deviants something to bind together in opposition of.

Deviant individuals are difficult if not impossible to identify. There are no "... natural boundaries" to tell us who or what we should designate as deviant(Erikson, 2005, p.5). This problem has made it difficult for sociologists to study this issue so they began to let the societies in which they studied deviance to define it for them. Erikson tells us that "[f]rom a sociological standpoint, deviance is not a property inherent in any particular kind of behavior; it is a property conferred upon that behavior by the people who come into ... contact with it" (2005, p.6). So to understand deviance within a society you must first understand that society and their standards. Why do they label some things as deviant and others as normal and accepted?

We all know and recognize that communities have physical boundaries, what we aren't as aware of automatically is that they also have strict outlines about what kind of behavior is acceptable and what is not.

Grounds and Warrants: The perfect Ingredients

I plan on using Joel Best's article, "Rhetoric in Claims-Making: Constructing the Missing Children Problem", as a basic guideline for my project in Social Control. I imagine my article having a similar title with the subheading being "The Archeology of Cell Phone Etiquette".

In Best's article he discusses the "missing children problem" and how it was constructed by the media and special interest groups in order to move their cause into the spotlight. Children who were taken by their non-custodial guardians or who ran away from home were placed under the same heading as children who were abducted by known criminals and killed in a brutal manner. The title of "missing children" gave the same attention to families that were experiencing situations of teen angst and those who had lost a child forever.

Best chronicles the rise of the use of this term (missing children) and the effects of claims making in its sensationalism. He tells us that claims should be analyzed and not just accepted. In his analysis he breaks them into categories of data/grounds, warrants/justifications, and conclusions/claims. If we all looked at claims in this manner we would have a clearer understanding of whether or not the claims were reasonable as such or if they are simply rhetorical.

Best, Joel. (April, 2007). "Rhetoric in Claims-Making: Constructing the Missing Children Problem" Social Problems. Vol. 34, No. 2. 101-21.

Plasticized Virginity: Public Enemy #1

In a Human Nature blog post I read about the rise in popularity of an affordable and easily accessible artificial hymen.

In many Muslim nations it is required that females remain virgins until they are married.  These women must prove their purity by bleeding on their wedding night. "If you're a man, on the other hand, all you have to do on your wedding night is ejaculate. Nobody expects you to bleed or produce any other proof of virginity"(Saletan, 2009).  Many women have found a way around this.  They go to their doctor to have a hymenoplasty, a reconstruction of the hymen so that it's in tact and able to produce blood when penetrated.  This option, while widely used is expensive, difficult to access, and even dangerous as is any medical procedure.  The new availability of a mail-order artificial hymen which is sold for about $30 and requires no medical assistance for use brings about a new freedom for many women.  

The conservative Muslims in these nations are greatly concerned by this prospect and are even considering amending their laws to account for this new product. "Outraged Egyptian lawmakers are demanding a ban on the kit" (Saletan, 2009).  

The idea that a piece of plastic is threatening the deep-seeded values of a country so greatly seems a bit absurd, but consider the implications.  Women have a great amount of power biologically; we bring new life into the world.  For some men this is a threatening prospect and so they feel the need to exercise control over it.  In requiring that new brides bleed on their wedding night, these conservative Muslim nations ensure that any offspring conceived that night is connected to the husband, not some handsome young devil that got the better of the girl a few weeks before.  This piece of plastic not only offers sexual freedom for women, it also threatens the legitimacy of the male based lineage system in these regions.

So there we have it.  Social control, it's not just for murderers anymore, now it's here to protect us from the cheap, plastic, mail-order hymen.

Saletan, William. (2009).  "The Beauty of 

Artificial Virginity". 

Human Nature. Tuesday, October 6, 2009. 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/humannature/ 

Deterrence

Andenaes breaks down social control methods into categories of general and specific. Each of these categories are described as deterring, moralizing behavior, and habitualizing lawful behavior.

Specific control is aimed towards the offender while general control is intended to convince society as a whole to behave lawfully. Andenaes argues that the superior method of control is the one which deters most effectively. If a society can convince its members to stop committing crimes then its method of control is a success.

Andenaes, J. 1974. "General Prevention - Illusion or Reality?" (electronic reserves)

Sleeping with the Impartial Expert

This article on Salon.com discusses the case of a man being tried for capital murder. The twist is that the prosecuting attorney happened to be sleeping with the judge. Hmmm... can we say conflict of interest?

Berlow, Alan. (2009). Ardor in the Court, Part 3. Salon.com. September 21st.