How did you handle these emergencies before cell phones existed?
Whether the idea is good or bad is, of course, irrelevant in GQ.
Let’s stick to a) the law and b) the technology.
What I think might be useful is not jamming cell phones per se but, inventing a device that can send a test ring to every cellphone within a specific radius. You could use it at the start of movies/lectures etc to remind people that you phone should either be silent or off.
Pagers. Before pagers, a doctor might leave the theater’s phone number for emergencies and give his seat location to the manager, who could alert him of emergencies via an usher. Or the doctor could leave every few minutes and call in.
I used to live in an area where a large portion of the population was employed in the construction and building trades.
Think regular telephones going off in a theater is bad? Try Nextel direct connect beeps, followed by the inevitable tinny screeching about the “g’damn rough-in plumbing inspection.” Nobody complained, because everybody else watching the movie was a building contractor of some sort.
Doctors are not always “on call.” A doctor who is on call should not go to a movie. Quite simple… go to blockbuster and rent a movie if you are a doctor on call. There is absolutely no excuse (not even a plausible “life or death” one) for having a cellphone in a movie theater.
Pagers. And before that, well, I’m too young to know, sorry. I guess people had to tell you in advance where they would be so they could be contacted.
Since this is GQ I’ll stop there.
I think I heard about a pastor who installed a cell phone jammer in his church someplace in Europe. I think he had to take it out after it was causing other types of interference.
Wow-I do feel old, now. My first pager was a Motorola Metro Pageboy (was that sexist?) and it was perhaps 2" by 1" by 8". All it would do was beep, so you had to know who was calling you. Your number was given to one entity, and that was it.
LOW tech.
Some of the proposed cell silencers i’ve read about on slashdot and the like are actually silencers, not jammers. The idea is that a localized signal is sent to the phones forcing them into silent or vibrate modes. Therefore doctors can still get their calls while the other 99% doesn’t have to piss everybody off with their ringing phones. Or you can be like my father and throw punches at the guy sitting beside you who tries his darnedest to talk over the movie. Coupled with the two guys sitting behind him kicking his seat at hard as they could, you can be assured he swiftly ended his call.
And now we know why Canada needs the law.