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UK Theme Park Bans SmartPhones. Everybody Panic!

Whenever I get in a discussion of the convenience of mobile devices, I run into some old fart who gets his knickers in a twist about how he doesn't carry one of them newfangled barkberries, he's too important to be at the beck and call of an electronic ball-and-chain. When confronted with one of these pundits, I like to inform him about an exciting new feature on my cutting-edge smartphone that helps protect my privacy. It's called an "off button."

A smartphone is a great servant, but a terrible master. It's nice to be able to check e-mail and have Internet access wherever you are. But the compulsive need to keep checking in at work and on social networks, even when you're supposed to be doing something else, makes you obsessive and twitchy. It's sometimes hard to know when it's appropriate to put away the smartphone.

UK theme park Alton Towers Resort wants to help. They're banning smartphones starting this week. Adults caught using their smartphones will be directed by staff to one of five "PDA Drop Off Zones" where they can "safely" leave their devices for the day, according to Ars Technica. The company refers to the smartphones as "PDAs," which is sweet and archaic, like when your grandmother called the refrigerator an "icebox."

Ars writes:

We won't be surprised to hear that some of Alton Towers Resort's workaholic visitors are less than thrilled about being escorted to a PDA Drop Off Point this week by a pimpled youth in a felt hat, but if the experiment proves to be an overall success, look for more establishments in the UK and (hopefully) even the US to erect more barriers on mobile phone and gadget usage in the name of enjoying where and who you're with.

Boing Boing views the development with alarm. Quoting a correspondent named Unusual Suspect, Boing Boing says: "These days it seems that using a camera in public is all but illegal. But Alton Towers amusement park in the UK has instituted a new rule, and has instituted 'special wardens' to enforce it. If you are seen using a Palm, iPaq or other personal digital assistant or smartphone, the special wardens will take it away from you."

I love Boing Boing and I think they do great work reporting on the gradual encroachments being made on our civil liberties by government and big business (including theme parks). But in this case I think they're pulling a false alarm; I don't see any reason to believe that the PDA ban is anything more than it appears to be -- an attempt to get parents to spend more time with their kids -- as well as a publicity stunt, of course.

Still, it's not all good, notes Boing Boing community moderator Teresa Nielsen Hayden:

I agree that people who are taking unnecessary calls are a vexation. But what if having [the smartphone] means the difference between being able to go to the park with your kids, and having to stay home?

Just the other day I took several business calls in quick succession while tying up my raspberry plants in the back yard. My choice wasn't between "taking calls while gardening" and "not taking calls while gardening"; it was between taking the calls in the garden, via smart phone and headset, and sitting indoors, drumming my fingers, while I waited for those calls to come in.

It's the nature of some jobs that you're on call a lot of the time. Banning smart phones and PDAs won't change that. What it will do is ban the people who have that kind of job.

"Nothing says fun like having your personal possessions taken away from you!" writes sofa0ne.

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