Cracking techno-conduct
14 03 07 - 09:24. Category: default
Instead of recommending treatment for drivers who are addicted to Crackberry, the State of Washington is considering criminalizing texting while driving. Of course, drivers should not engage in texting or email reading while driving because in doing so is distracting and dangerous, but the recent trend of some local legislatures to regulate 21st Century behavior is getting absurd. Outlawing texting while driving is the most recent example of how legislatures are increasingly and unreflectively (in my opinion) concluding that criminalizing techno-conduct is a sensible way of alerting technology users to undesirable bahavior.Certainly, some technology users are careless or abusive in the manner in which they use: cell phones while driving, cell phones while watching movies in public theatres, cell phones in restaurants, digital cameras while in private spaces, laptops while listening to lectures, blackberries while doing anything and other similarly inappropriate attempts at multi-tasking, but the trend toward regulating this behavior is as inappropriate as the behavior itself - - more so, since many of the laws regulating techno-conduct are facially absurd. Since the use of technolgies in daily life is likely to dramatically increase as the century advances, the use of legal restraints to control technology users is bound to increase far beyond what we imagine today, if the trend toward regulation of techno-conduct continues unabated.
Rather than the use of legal coercion, technology users should be generally free to use their devices as they please without legal restraint. Inappropriate behavior should be constrained by custom and social standards, which sometimes require time to develop.