Most of us, if we give it some serious consideration, will find that we have at least two personas – the one that we put on as soon as we enter the safe have of our homes and share intimately with the people we love, and the one that we don when we go out into the world, going about the daily business of work, chores and general socializing. For most of us, this distinction is a clear one, and we are aware that we behave differently at home and in public, but sometimes, this distinction become blurred, and we share in a more public way aspects of our lives that might arguably be better left at home.



One of these personal expressions that has, over the years, become a more public thing is our choice of entertainment. While it would be unthinkable for most of us to read aloud in public from the book or magazine we are currently enjoying, many of us feel no such foibles about sharing our taste in music with the world. There was a time when this public musical display was the sole remit of burly young types with ghetto blasters propped up on their shoulders, but with the current ubiquity of cell phone ringtones, even the most conservative of souls are now sharing their musical tastes with the world.

While cell phone undoubtedly make the world a smaller place, allowing us be contacted whenever and wherever needs be, the growing popularity of non-traditional ringing sounds, that is the movement of ringtones from practical alerting mechanism to medium of entertainment and expression, has rendered cell phones singularly invasive in the public domain. There was a time when most people would never think to play loud music in a public place, but with the advent of these ringtones almost everyone is at it.

Our world is steadily becoming more and more afflicted by noise pollution, and the development of musical ringtones is not helping the situation. While unusual ringtones are a useful way to distinguish one phone from the multitude of others that are likely to ring at any given time, the overwhelming prevalence of these tones makes many of us long for a bit of peace and quiet.