Ringing disapproval. Thinkers like James Katz, communications professor at Rutgers, and David Karp, a Boston College sociologist, think they’ve figured out what’s so annoying about cell phone use in public. The phrase Katz uses is that it’s “like cutting up the park,” which I think is probably a reference to the seminal ecological article, Garrett Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons” (1968). The concept is somewhat analogous to Hardin’s, indeed. The idea is that the cell phone user is privatizing public space and indicating a disregard for others whose rights have been appropriated. It strikes me that this explains what, to a lesser extent (yes, around 50% less, because it’s just listening and not speaking) is similarly annoying about public walkman use.