'Hell Is Other People'

Cell Phones, says Dick Meyer, Give Loud Louts A Captive Audience

(CBS)  Contrary to what you undoubtedly think by now, this column is much, much more than just a misanthropic, Luddite rant by a cranky middle-aged white man. This is a genuine public service.

There is a movement out there trying to legitimize and rationalize cell phone terrorism. And in the words of one of America's iconic guardians of the public square, Barney Fife of Mayberry, North Carolina, we have to "nip it, nip it in the bud."

According to some engineers and students of humanoid behavior, "inconsiderate cell phone man" is inevitable.

Technically, the culprit is something called "sidetone." When you talk into a regular old-fashioned telephone, you actually hear your own voice in the earpiece as you speak. If you blow into the mouthpiece, you'll hear it in the earpiece.

Cell phones don't have sidetone; the additional hardware would make them too big. Not hearing your own voice in the earpiece instinctively makes you talk louder and you don't realize it. To use a word you haven't heard before, sidetone or hearing your own voice is "psycho-acoustically" necessary to modulate your voice.

This may be true, but I think it's the moral equivalent of the Twinkie defense and ought to be dismissed out of hand.

The behaviorists add that when you talk to another person in person, it's easy to modulate. You have a sense of their privacy and your joint privacy that for most people creates a desire not to be totally overheard, a desire that wireless phones seems to totally eviscerate. Further, the techno-shrinks observe, the smaller the mouthpiece and the further it is from said orifice, the louder a homo sapien will speak. Psycho-acoustically speaking, it's predetermined.

Now the Meyerian view would be that people talk too loudly on cell phones in public because they are rude louts who weren't raised properly and have no sense of public etiquette and decent manners. Apparently people can no longer stand to be alone: both physically and electronically disconnected from their pack. The ability to be civil and considerate, in public and in tight quarters with strangers, is atrophying.

I believe the solution is a remote control device you could aim at a wireless delinquent and make the cell phone emit a high pitched tone, rendering its user temporarily deaf and incontinent.

It might not be good manners, but psycho-acoustically speaking, I think it might work.

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Dick Meyer, a veteran political and investigative producer for CBS News, is the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com, based in Washington.

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