Etiquette of cellphone use

Mobile phones have changed our lives ... but not always for the better. PHOTO/FILE

What a tangled web we find ourselves in. You know - information technology, the inter-web, mobile phones, tablet computers, and playstations.

Young children appear to have their numbers allocated at birth along with their vitamin K injection - mobile phone, email address, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest accounts, gaming avatar, and Twitter handles. So what's a Twitter handle? Who cares?

The older you get the harder it is to pick up all of the technology you have to master to use this stuff - certainly the later you begin the harder it gets.

And what's the use of it all, anyway? Is it just a way for pasty-faced youths with no friends to interact with a society they have spurned - or has spurned them? To sit in their smelly bedrooms late at night gaming or watching porn until they are totally useless to man or beast?

Or are there really more prosaic uses for this technology?

There is for the mobile phone ... cellphones have certainly changed our lives.

Certainly Her Delightfulness used to appreciate not having to wait on a wet, windy Wellington street after work for me to pick her up - a text on arrival would warn her that I was there waiting to whisk her off to her fairy castle in the sky (well, up the hill to Karori anyway).

And those of us with eyes still good enough to work them know the value of carrying a phone that allows you to contact anyone, no matter where you are or where they are, provided you both have coverage.

You can call the AA when you break down, or to change a place or time where you are meeting someone.

If you are using a mobile phone you don't need to know how it works - just how to work it. But it has placed a new strain on human relationships requiring a whole new etiquette for manners-conscious society to adopt.

Cinemas and any public gathering will now begin by urging all to "turn off". We attended a play at Downstage in Wellington some years back when two rows of young ladies from a prestigious private school filed in. Throughout the play the two rows were glowing from the screens of their phones - were they reviewing the play for the press, discussing Jenny's personality, or the biceps on the leading man?

My mate Kevin was returning by bus from Wellington in September.

A professionally dressed young woman sat down beside him but snootily ignored him when he nodded a greeting.

After a moment she pulled out her cellphone and dialled.

"Hi honey, it's Melissa - my meeting took longer than expected and I missed my flight.

"I got a ticket on the Naked Bus so I won't be home till about 10 o'clock. No, you fool, it's just the name of the bus, everyone is fully clothed ... you know you're the only one for me, I don't even look at other men.

"My meeting was with the stupid regional manager not that creep from sales - I don't even like him, he's a jerk. Have you folded the washing? I hope you didn't wash my white blouse with your work shirts."

The one-sided conversation brayed on in a similar vein for some time with volume increasing as it went.

After a long time Kevin - normally congenial, but every man has his limit - leaned over and spoke into the phone: "Aww, c'mon Mel - hang up that phone and come back to bed."

Melissa probably doesn't use her phone in public that much any more.Chris Northover is a Wanganui-based former corporate lawyer who has worked in the fields of aviation, tourism, health and the environment.