No Escape...

Well, gentle readers, rather than smashing my video camera against the wall, I managed today to transfer some video content to my PC. It seems that my mistake was to assume that I could transfer the data straight onto a CD. Instead, I had to transfer it to the hard disk first.

Easy when you know how, isn't it?

On the subject of technology making our lives less not more pleasant, I read a very disturbing news article on the BBC Website yesterday. It seems that scientists have worked out how to stop mobile phone signals from interfering with the navigational equipment on airliners. They have developed a system for allowing mobile phones to be used inside the cabin of an aircraft, as long as it is flying above 3,000 metres.

Now I'm all in favour of scientific research and human progress and all that Star Trek stuff, but come on, don't you think these scientists have gone a bit too far in "giving the customers what they want"? I mean, don't they realise what a hellish Pandora's Box they have just opened?

Imagine what flying in a plane will be like about two years from now, when the system has finally been approved and all the airlines slavishly install it in their cabins. You get yourself comfortably seated and buckled in, the in-flight magazine nicely balanced on your gut, or your favourite novel open in your hand and, just after takeoff, a soft little 'beep' will sound in the cabin, announcing that 'mobile devices such as phones and laptop computers can now be activated safely'.

And activated they will be, oh yes, and pretty damn quick! The cabin will suddenly metamorphose into a beeping, clicking, flying coffee-house; a great loud Babel of different tongues gabbling and barking and quacking and yelping into their PDAs, bluetooth earpieces, mobile phones and God knows what else. If you're lucky, the staccato chorus of 100 thumbs clicking SMS messages into existence will quietly permeate the aisles and rows of the plane. But more likely, the passengers sitting RIGHT NEXT TO YOU will be those special people blessed by God Almighty with the loudest and most irritatingly nasal voices ever to have been produced by human vocal apparatus.

And that's just Business Class!!

Imagine what this cacophonous Inner Circle of the Damned will be like back in Economy where you are squeezed together like on a Slave Ship. It's bad enough at the moment when someone a few rows behind you makes up for his lack of mobile fix by speaking exceptionally loudly to his neighbour about something utterly and confoundedly dull and stupefyingly boring. You just want to get up out of your seat, reach back and commit an outrageous act of Air Rage just to SHUT THEM UP!!!!

And that, my dear friends, is only a merest taste of what it's going to be like on every flight, everywhere in the world IF these scientists get their way and their damned system gets the green light. Everyone will be able to piss you off BIG TIME for hours and hours on end, without being told off by the cabin staff for causing a danger to the other passengers. You can forget about concentrating on your Stephen King or Harry Potter. You can completely forget about sitting back and soaking up the calm, stratospheric peace of air travel. And you can forget about being able to hold a conversation with that pretty girl/handsome guy next to you because he or she will be too busy clicking away!!!

The only respite you will get is mealtime and, if you are lucky enough to be on a long-haul flight, the in-flight movies. But apart from that, if you are like me and think of travel as a much-needed stretch of calm in between the chaos of departure and the madness of arrival, then you will not be a very happy chappie at all.

So I would like to make a request to all airlines, especially Malaysian Airlines and Air Asia, which I use frequently. Please, Oh Please do not adopt this technology which will bring Hell and Misery to the cabins of your aircraft! Please go on believing that mobile phone signals will have catastrophic effects on an aircraft, and cause it to go off course and crash.

If you grant my wish, I will be soooooooo happy, and I will sooooo keep on enjoying your in-cabin experience. If you don't, well, I suppose I'll have to fall back on Plan B: stuff my ears up with cotton wool. Then I'll be able to read my book!