Scott Adams, author of the Dilbert cartoon strip, had this funny post in his blog:
How Certain is Certain?
I’d better reduce the font for this entry because it’s about the guy sitting next to me on the flight to Chicago.
Before takeoff, we both sat here tapping away on our Blackberries, sending last-minute messages. But where I interpreted the flight attendant’s instruction to turn off all electronics as just that, the high powered executive next to me had a different view. He interpreted it to mean hide your Blackberry when the Flight Attendant is looking. Otherwise, keep working all the way through takeoff.
On one hand, I’m almost totally certain that a Blackberry can’t bring down an airline. If it could, even in the most unlikely scenario, it surely would have happened a dozen times already. If you consider all of the flights in the world and all of the cell phones and Blackberries and laptops and PDAs that have traveled on them, it seems impossible that they could be a threat.
But still. There he was, tapping away, and maybe, just maybe killing me. I thought about doing something, like informing the flight attendant. But I need to rely on this passenger to move for me at some time during this flight so I can use the rest room. It could be a tense, uncomfortable flight if I get him angry. I had to weigh a 20% chance of not getting a timely wiz versus a .00000001% chance of a fireball-related death.
So I just sat there staring at the rule-breaker thumbing his little death machine while the pilot gunned the engines and headed skyward. Could this be the one time when a Blackberry causes a jet to plunge into the Rockies? How certain was I that this was safe? Can you ever be sure enough in these situations?
My only solace is that if this puppy goes down, the headlines will read “Plane Crashes. Dilbert Cartoonist is turned into Charcoal.†That’s called Top Billing, baby. Take that, rule breaker! I hope he’s not the new Chairman of the Fed or something. That would really suck.