People have been predicting for thousands of years that technology would destroy civilisation. Ok, they didn’t really have “civilisation” thousands of years ago, because back then you couldn’t stream films on your phone. They hadn’t even invented the cocktail shaker. But they did have technology — the wheel was such a big deal that people used it to make the word “revolution”. You can be sure that at least some people were worried about the trouble it would cause.
All these millennia later, and civilisation persists, at least when defined as, “Groups of people with the luxury to complain about stuff”. But for how long? How long before our cleverness springs a trap we cannot escape from?
You can guess where I’m going here. I am talking, of course, about portable phone battery packs, which I just learned from the safety announcement on my flight are called “power banks”.
Here’s the deal: power banks are a genius invention that allows you to keep your phone charged while you travel. This is essential, now that airlines provide a vast selection of films that you cannot choose between because technology has rotted your decision-making facilities, but the airline also provides the opportunity to pay an exorbitant fee for wi-fi so you can access the personalised algorithm in your streaming-service account and continue to stream films on your phone. So long as it remains charged.
Except that you are not allowed to use a power bank, because it might catch on fire. Surely, you complain, as is your right as a civilised person, that’s very unlikely. And if it does happen, presumably the airline staff are trained in the use of a fire extinguisher? The problem here is that your civilised brain is not thinking far enough ahead. If people are allowed to have power banks, then inevitably everyone will be carrying a power bank, or perhaps five. During flight the floor plan of the cabin will be like three strips of firecrackers, randomly bursting into flame. The airline staff will spend the entire flight quite literally firefighting. There will be almost no time to flog duty free.
All right. Fine. No power banks on flights. We’ll just have to store them in our luggage.
Oh no! Not in the luggage! Are you crazy? Setting aside that only a rank amateur travels with checked luggage, we now have a cargo hold packed with 400 self-activating fire-lighters. Now we’re envisioning a future where airline pilots are trained to routinely fly for up to eleven hours with their plane’s cargo hold ablaze.
At this point you might ask just why power banks are doomed to catch fire, and I’d be glad if you did, because it would provide an opportunity for an important lesson in both “civilisation” and “technology”, as we currently endure them. It is, of course, in the interest of power bank manufacturers to develop a power bank that they can market as absolutely guaranteed never to catch on fire, even if you leave it out in the sun during a heat wave, or douse it in petrol and apply a lighted match, or accidentally throw it into a wood-fired pizza oven. Most of which are fairly unlikely during a flight.
Unfortunately, the entities I have loftily labelled “power bank manufacturers” could also be labelled, “all-purpose manufacturers of every single item they could realistically convince a consumer to purchase”, or, more succinctly, grubby little shits. They know that at the moment when you need to buy a power bank, which is when you’ve just discovered that your phone’s battery has only 1% left and you know the location of only one charger in the house because all the others are somewhere in your teenager’s bedroom, and it turns out that you don’t actually know the location of that one charger because today your spouse took it to work — well, that’s the moment when you will order the cheapest power bank on Amazon, the one where all the negative reviews are vastly outweighed by the positive reviews that say things like, “This charger was amazing, it lasted an entire week, and it probably only caught fire because my wife put it in her handbag, ha ha, there’s justice in the world after all, five stars.”
I hope this goes some way towards explaining why 95% of all power banks are guaranteed to ignite inflight.
You think I’m exaggerating? You think I’m making shit up? Ha! Here is an article about a flight that was diverted to the nearest available airport because of a power bank. Was it because a power bank caught on fire? No. Was it because a passenger and a flight attendant entered into an altercation because the passenger refused to unplug their power bank? No. Was it because a passenger tried to smoke a cigarette in a bathroom, and use a power bank to light it? I’m sorry to say, also No. A passenger, having presumably quivered with a terrible secret all through taxiing and take-off and some portion of the flight, finally cracked and confessed that they had a power bank in their checked luggage. That was it. The plane had to land immediately.
So here we are, at the point where I reveal the full pernicious horror of the Power Bank Trap. You cannot travel without a power bank (obvs), but you cannot store it in your checked luggage, and in fact, as I learned just now while typing this before I was told to put away all electronic devices, you aren’t allowed to store it in the overhead locker. You must keep the power bank with you, in your seat pocket, right there — but you must not use it.
Hands up everyone who thinks this will work.
That’s right. My phone’s charge dropped all the way down to 94% just in the time it took to surreptitiously listen to a podcast during the safety announcement. It’s dropped another 2% merely signing up for the wi-fi. There’s no way I can make it through the flight! Yes, that is a proper power socket in the base of the seat in front of me, but my plug is in my bag in the overhead locker. My power bank, on the other hand, is right there in front of me in the seat pocket! It’s already starting to smoke and spark in anticipation. Surely it won’t do any harm to get my phone back up to full charge before the meal arrives? I’ll wrap it in some napkins so that the flight attendant won’t see, and I’ll stop if I smell anything suspicious, and I promise to pay very close attention, unless I need to go to the bathroom. Do you think that would be all right?
The inevitable conclusion, I think you’ll agree, is that civilisation is doomed. I don’t see a way out of this one. There is no way to stop people using an electronic gadget that is within arm’s reach, even if the flight attendants start carrying power-bank detectors and cattle prods.
The article I linked earlier said that the UK Civil Aviation Authority is going to “launch a campaign” this summer to explain the situation to air passengers. Wow! Such confidence in humanity! It brings tears to the eyes.
Is it possible? Could human beings — and we’re talking here about people who are aghast when their huge canisters of cosmetic sprays are confiscated at security, even though you haven’t been allowed to take bottles larger than 100ml on planes since 1932 — process the facts of the situation and act maturely? En masse?
Ok. Let’s see. Let us all look to this as a simple, conclusive test on whether human civilisation has what it takes to continue.
We should find out soon — keep your phones charged for the news.
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