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Moviegoers may laugh at the Cingular Wireless commercial about a man who talks on his cell phone and gets ejected from his seat while watching a film. But do they actually want to see this happen?
Apparently, some people do.
The New York City council has passed a bill that prohibits cell-phone use in public performance venues like museums, art galleries and theaters. The bill's introduction back in August followed two instances in which famous actors lashed out at cell-phone users during Broadway performances.
In the middle of one of his performances, Kevin Spacey turned to a person who answered a cell phone and said, "Tell them you're busy."
Laurence Fishburne wasn't as congenial. In the middle of his performance, he yelled to a member of the audience, "Turn your fucking phone off!"
Mayor Michael Bloomberg vetoed the cell-phone legislation shortly after it passed, but the city council is expected to override the veto when it meets on Thursday, according to a spokeswoman for Bloomberg. That would make the bill law within 30 days.
According to research by LetsTalk.com, the idea that it's inappropriate to use a cell phone under certain circumstances is gaining acceptance among cell-phone users, who make up 49 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association.
Three years ago, 11 percent of cell-phone users thought it was OK to take a call in a movie theater. That number has since dwindled to 6 percent of those surveyed at the end of last year, according to LetsTalk.com.
Whether cell-phone users actually heed their own advice is another matter.
While London's industrial design firm Ideo isn't in the business of making ejectable movie theater seats, designers at the company have created prototypes for five cell phones that enable bystanders to send electric shocks, anonymous angry warnings and jarring noises to annoying cell-phone users.
Ideo, which has designed such products as the Palm V pocket computer and the TiVo personal video recorder, says the public is so irate about inappropriate cell-phone use that something has to be done about it.
"The electric shock represents people's anger at the mobile phone," said Crispin Jones, a freelance research associate with Ideo. "People feel that pain should be inflicted on the people who misuse them."
All five of Ideo's social mobile phones will be on display at Tokyo's Metropolitan Museum of Photography on Feb. 27.
The first phone, called SoMo1, automatically sends a mild electric shock to a caller who is speaking too loudly. The tingling sensation can become an unpleasant jolt if the caller doesn't keep his or her voice down.
"Give it to my cousin," said Mike Sepe, a 25-year-old freelance illustrator who was recently at the Metreon movie theater complex in San Francisco. "He's the worst with a cell phone."
The second phone, the SoMo2, is intended for places where talking on a cell phone isn't appropriate, like a hushed art gallery or a movie theater. The user doesn't actually speak into the phone. Instead, a joystick and a pair of saxophone-style keys control a speech synthesizer that emits a range of short sounds like "yeah" and "no" to get a point across.
The SoMo3, which is shaped like a clarinet, requires users to "play the tune" of the phone number they wish to dial by holding down combinations of keys and blowing, much like a musical instrument. Designers hope that the added layer of difficulty -- not to mention the spectacle -- may make callers think twice about getting on the phone.
"SoMo3 is the most elegant phone," Jones said. "(SoMo1, the electric shock phone) is more of a blunt instrument than it is an elegant instrument."
There are no electric shocks with SoMo4, but knocking sounds replace the ringing tone of the phone to help people decide when it is appropriate to take a call. To make a call, the user selects the phone number and knocks on the back of the phone, as if it were a door. Then the person on the other end decides how urgent the knocking is and whether the call should be answered.
Almost any moviegoer who has endured someone's conversation during a film could appreciate SoMo5: The phone enables anyone using it to anonymously interrupt another person's cell-phone conversation by electronically catapulting phrases like "Shut up!" and "Keep it down!"
Jones and his colleagues at Ideo don't plan to sell the phones as actual products. (Sorry, folks.) They simply want to bring public opinion out into the open and to stir up discussion.
They also want to explore whether a new design for cell phones, in general, could help people become more discreet when they use it in public.
Mat Hunter, the studio leader for Ideo in London, said that cell-phone users tend to be louder -- thus, more obnoxious -- because they tend to be out and about where there is so much noise from traffic and crowds of people. Also, users are competing against static and dropped calls that usually plague cellular systems.
"You have no idea how loud you are," Hunter said.
But it also doesn't help when the phone's microphone is located behind the numbers keypad rather than at the mouthpiece, as was the case with several Ericsson phones that Ideo cracked open for its project.
"It was an odd arrangement," Jones said.
In San Francisco, where cell-phone usage is among the heaviest in the nation, the idea of changing the design of cell phones seemed to resonate better than calls for legislation or other methods to address the problem.
When several moviegoers at San Francisco's Metreon Center were stopped to ask whether they wanted to see movie theater managers hand out Ideo's phones, they laughed. They also scoffed at the idea of Mayor Willie Brown instituting a mandate against cell-phone use in the theater.
"There should be ushers that periodically check and tell people to take (their conversations) outside," said Allen Hurt, a 38-year-old graphic designer. "But if a company like Cingular Wireless or Motorola were instituting shock treatments -- I know George Bush and John Ashcroft would like that -- but it isn't my style."
"I don't see why you won't place the phone on vibrate (mode)," said Brian Duval, a 34-year-old sales representative. "Vibrate does the trick."
