Cellphone Ethics, not Etiquette

I could write a very long rant about cellphone etiquette, as I'm sure you could too. Who hasn't be subjected to VERY LOUD "conversations" along the lines of "so, he's like, I totally didn't mean that, and I'm like, You are so busted, and she goes (yadda yadda yadda)"? Not to mention the phones that ring (and are answered) during theater performances, concerts, and movies. Not to mention... But you get the idea.

Instead, I'd like to think about this quote, which I found in Matt Richtel's article in today's New York Times on "Promoting the Car Phone, Despite Risks":

"If you’re an engineer, you don’t want to outlaw the great technology you’ve been working on... If you’re a marketing person, you don’t want to outlaw the thing you’ve been trying to sell. If you’re a C.E.O., you don’t want to outlaw the thing that’s been making a lot of money."

Richtel identifies the speaker as Bob Lucky, a now-retired former director at Bell Labs.

It's a great insight into a key problem in corporate ethics: When you have a great new product, how carefully do you want to look at its potential problems?

Lucky and other early developers were aware of the potential for "distracted driving". A former Motorola engineer admits that "I’d pass by the exit I was supposed to take because I was talking on the phone."

"Thinking back, he said he was 'absolutely' aware of potential dangers but did not think roads would become filled with distracted drivers."

One distracted driver, of course, is all it really takes, especially at high speeds and on a congested roadway.

The tough question is how to encourage corporations to build in a "devil's advocate" position into their operations: someone whose job it is to think about potential negative ramifications of a new product or technology and not just its upside marketing potential. Where such a role is played, it's usually taken on by legal (which is why we have all those great little warnings on not misusing the products we buy).

In this case, I'd like to see one cellphone manufacturer or service provider take the high road and stake out a safety zone -- be the Volvo of cellphones if you like -- perhaps by engineering a phone that won't work if it passes through x number of cell transmitters in y minutes (although this would prevent passengers from using their phones too).