Mike Masnick’s recent article in TheFeature points out a sociotechnical collision in the making: people don’t want to hear phone conversations on planes, and airlines are increasingly offering broadband data services in flight.

In fact, a new study shows two thirds of air travelers would prefer to keep airplanes and phone-free zones. This isn’t all that surprising, given the many stories in the past of “mobile phone rage” among those who get upset at hearing half a conversation. In fact, some studies have shown that the reason people get so upset at mobile phone conversations, as opposed to a regular conversation is the lack of hearing the other half of the conversation. No one is sure if this is simply because people are naturally nosy, or because the pauses between actually hearing someone speak make it more jarring.

Of course, there are

plenty of people who do want to talk while flying, so it’s very likely that it will come about in some form — even if planes start to have “mobile phone” and “no mobile phone” sections. Either way, though, it seems unlikely that airlines would really be able to ban chatting with those on the ground completely. The thing that broadband connections have made clear back here on the ground, is that the separation of voice from other types of data isn’t that important any more. VoIP (which is just treating voice as data) is taking on traditional landlines. With all that broadband on airplanes, will the airlines have to ban things like Skype and other voice chat solutions?