Let’s begin where all good stories should. Microsoft has filed a patent for a technology it’s calling Digital Manners Policy which would basically tell your phone what features could be used in certain situations. For example, enter a cinema and DMP would automatically shift your phone to vibrate mode, so the ringing doesn’t disturb others watching the film. In a museum it could disable your camera, stopping you from photographing rare portraits. If somebody robbed a bank, they could presumably hack the DMP to stop outgoing phonecalls – but that’s neither here or there, really.

Understandably, the patent has come under attack from privacy advocates, but what upsets me is not that Microsoft is coming up with this technology, but that as a society we’ve become so discourteous to each other that we’ve opened the door to it in the first place. And it’s everywhere – London public transport is currently running ads reminding us to give up our seats up to pregnant women, advising us to save our slanging matches for when we get home, and generally begging us to be civil to one another.

It’s utterly ridiculous, and utterly necessary. And that’s tragic. People are constantly whinging about the Big Brother state, but at the end of the day, if your kid brother is an unruly little sod who needs a slap to keep him out of trouble, then a big brother is no bad thing. Quite clearly the patent will never lead anywhere – aside from the legal complications, the technical hangups of making DMP work with all the different devices would be a nightmare. But here’s the thing… and whisper it… it’s not a bad idea. Because if we can’t even be trusted to be civil to each other, then we really are inviting this sort of thing on ourselves.