There's a breakfast spot that I visit sometimes, with a sign on the wall that reads; "We do not have 'WiFi' -- Talk to each other -- Pretend it's 1995"
I totally support the phone-free bar and restaurant experience and encouraging people to socialize verbally instead of online but the thing is that I like to eat breakfast alone.
It's a meditative process to me. There's nothing better than sitting in a greasy spoon looking out at a rainy day eating bacon and hashbrowns while sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. Just watching the world and gthe people go by while flipping and folding the pages of a large newspaper. That's bliss.
Now that newspapers aren't really a thing anymore I like to read the news on my phone, or a paper about a topic that interests me.
It's good to promote socializing as long as it doesn't come at the expensive at reflective processes.
> flipping and folding the pages of a large newspaper
wondering if there were cafes 100 years ago that advertised themselves as "newspaper-free" so patrons can find relief from the page-rustling of everyday life
I knew someone was going to pull on that little thread.
So let's use a dictionary definition: meditative -- of, involving, or absorbed in meditation or considered thought.
In that context I have for decades now enjoyed sipping coffee, reading the news, and watching peope go by, smiling at the waitress, and considering how it all fits together. The cream in my cup, the man crossing the street, the price of tea in China -- it's all connected. Sometimes do this without a phone or a newspaper or a book. Sometimes I don't.
This is just how I like to spend my Sunday breakfast. Alone. Not talking to people. Watching them and the world.
Hmm I love phone free nightclubs (or rather camera free, they tape off the cameras). Like techno clubs.
Not so much of a fan of this in bars and restaurants, sometimes you need to stay in touch with friends who are still arriving etc. Or often they change their mind "this place is cool, why don't you come to us instead of us coming to you?". But ok plenty of places to choose from.
> sometimes you need to stay in touch with friends who are still arriving etc.
Do we need to? We are way too communicative now days. Back before everyone had cell phones, you said on Monday to friends and/or co-workers, "Let's get drinks on Friday at 7pm at BarClub" - Everyone put it in their diary, and on Friday at 6:55-7:30, people showed up where they were supposed to.
We now have this anxiety around not being in constant contact with people, when just a couple decades ago, we wouldn't talk to a person for days/weeks at a time, but still manage to get together without (m)any issues.
It is what it is. It's how things work now. Anyway I have great respect for places that tape off cameras because it makes others feel safe. Because they know they won't be photographed without consent.
But being on your mobile somewhere is more of a "you do you" thing for me. I'm not always on my phone, when I go out I don't go near it normally but getting a quick message is no problem IMO. For example when plans change. When others are on phones around me I don't find that very annoying, there's much more annoying behaviour.
Personally I hate planning and love chaos so I really like this thing where I see someone online at 2am and they're like "hey why don't you come out to this club". Which happens fairly often.
Humans used to get on ships and sail away, perhaps never to be heard from again. We can absolutely survive several minutes of confusion around eating arrangements. "Text me when you get there." Let's all just calm down and live with a little uncertainty
There will always be other places that don’t care.
But I think it’s okay to appreciate the world around you and spend time being present while waiting for someone. We used to do this all the time. People watching is fun.
There's another aspect: these days most people don't like being told what to do. When it infringes on other people's lives like making photos I understand but anything else nope.
I couldn't imagine working in an army either. I'd never let them get away with barking at me.
In 1989 I wrote and posted a paper letter to a college friend of ours in Northern England, asking, hey, around [June date I forget] we will be in London, want to meetup? A while later I get a reply letter saying sure, how about we meet at Piccadilly Circus on this date at this time. I posted an affirmative reply and there was no further communication. We were in Arizona at the time.
On the agreed-to date and time we were there, and so was she.
If we were talk about paper maps, it would blow people's minds. If we were to get further in the weeds and describe how we traveled around communist Czechoslovakia w/o a map, only a phrasebook entitled "Travelers Czech", well...
Ah I forgot! We, without being specific about the date, knew that other college friends of ours, originally from Czechoslovakia, had told us they were going to be in their home town of Olomouc. We got the barest help in Prague with my wife's bad German on how to get there by train. Arrived, got a room, and called them up. For the next week they showed us around the country and visited family and friends.
Other than lousy waiters in Prague we had a terrific adventure. Different times.
But you sure had to able to demonstrate you had integrity in your agreements and were open to changes of plans.
What's amusing is that I've tried to do thing sometimes today, where I make plans with someone a few weeks in advance and then just show up. Only to have them not be there, and when I ask what happened, they said, "oh, I didn't think we were still doing that, you hadn't said anything about it in a while"
It’s kind of funny that business etiquette has moved much more to scheduled meetings even for short discussions, and social life has moved in the opposite direction.
It depends. My friends with kids have everything planned out months in advance. If they're to come out to something they have to have it all scheduled between judo classes and school birthday parties blah blah
The rest of us just wing it. Which I really prefer. I hate having plans. Especially in case I might not feel like it on the night in question.
There are a couple of communities that have almost no phone presence. Certain kinds of music festivals are an example, and it's really quite nice not having to worry about being filmed.
Great. It would be nice to normalize that as a feature. A cafe near me sort of has this by simply not offering WiFi and having a sign about it, and it works - there are people having conversations with their kids and with friends and with strangers there, while all other cafes seem to be mostly people on their phones and iPads (especially kids) and laptops. Also we need a total ban on meta glasses and other similar surveillance devices.
You could enforce this by making a farday cage out of the building. I looked into this for an irrational (5G is government poison) family member. I wasn't going to debate how RF works, just buy some points by helping her indulge her fantasy. But actual RF blocking copper mesh material is very expensive. I wonder if this could be done via wallpaper and printing using a conductive ink printed on the same pattern?
You really don't need a full on faraday cage. Signals in the phone frequency range are pretty poor at penetration, especially brick or concrete. I once lived in a house with lath and plaster walls, and I had to leave the office door open to even get wifi in there.
Perhaps some well placed metallic material on or near the windows would suffice?
Well, what does it mean to be "grounded". There isn't something special about the voltage potential of Earth.
If a Faraday cage blocks interstellar signals only if one part of it is stuck in a ball of mud and rock... well, I have some questions.
There is the possibility of the ground being a return path to the transmitter, but if that were effective, radio infrastructure would interfere world-wide, and you could transmit through the earth's core. And even that argument would suggest that the Faraday cage should be floating, not grounded.
>although if you use a busted microwave from the 80s it gives you good plausible deniability.
Not every radio runs off 2.4G, the frequency that microwaves would affect. Even for wifi there's 5ghz and 6ghz bands. For cellphones there are far more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands
SImilar, except their belief is part of a illness that's some kind of dementia. It went further into all kinds of radiations, including things that are meaningless, like the 911 frequency.
It degraded slowly over a decade. It's "stabilized" but just a bunch of word salad.
There's a breakfast spot that I visit sometimes, with a sign on the wall that reads; "We do not have 'WiFi' -- Talk to each other -- Pretend it's 1995"
I totally support the phone-free bar and restaurant experience and encouraging people to socialize verbally instead of online but the thing is that I like to eat breakfast alone.
It's a meditative process to me. There's nothing better than sitting in a greasy spoon looking out at a rainy day eating bacon and hashbrowns while sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. Just watching the world and gthe people go by while flipping and folding the pages of a large newspaper. That's bliss.
Now that newspapers aren't really a thing anymore I like to read the news on my phone, or a paper about a topic that interests me.
It's good to promote socializing as long as it doesn't come at the expensive at reflective processes.
> flipping and folding the pages of a large newspaper
wondering if there were cafes 100 years ago that advertised themselves as "newspaper-free" so patrons can find relief from the page-rustling of everyday life
> I totally support the phone-free bar and restaurant experience
If you then expect an exemption because your phone use is different then I challenge that you don’t actually support the experience.
If you want to read news in a phone-free environment: bring a newspaper, a kindle, etc.
> It's a meditative process to me. [...] I like to read the news on my phone.
I don't think reading news, especially on the phone, is meditative.
With paper you might pause & reflect while turning a page, with phone even that is lost.
> Just watching the world and the people go by while
Why not do that without looking at the phone?
I knew someone was going to pull on that little thread.
So let's use a dictionary definition: meditative -- of, involving, or absorbed in meditation or considered thought.
In that context I have for decades now enjoyed sipping coffee, reading the news, and watching peope go by, smiling at the waitress, and considering how it all fits together. The cream in my cup, the man crossing the street, the price of tea in China -- it's all connected. Sometimes do this without a phone or a newspaper or a book. Sometimes I don't.
This is just how I like to spend my Sunday breakfast. Alone. Not talking to people. Watching them and the world.
Beautifully said, thank you.
I'm glad I pulled on that thread :)
Hmm I love phone free nightclubs (or rather camera free, they tape off the cameras). Like techno clubs.
Not so much of a fan of this in bars and restaurants, sometimes you need to stay in touch with friends who are still arriving etc. Or often they change their mind "this place is cool, why don't you come to us instead of us coming to you?". But ok plenty of places to choose from.
> sometimes you need to stay in touch with friends who are still arriving etc.
Do we need to? We are way too communicative now days. Back before everyone had cell phones, you said on Monday to friends and/or co-workers, "Let's get drinks on Friday at 7pm at BarClub" - Everyone put it in their diary, and on Friday at 6:55-7:30, people showed up where they were supposed to.
We now have this anxiety around not being in constant contact with people, when just a couple decades ago, we wouldn't talk to a person for days/weeks at a time, but still manage to get together without (m)any issues.
It is what it is. It's how things work now. Anyway I have great respect for places that tape off cameras because it makes others feel safe. Because they know they won't be photographed without consent.
But being on your mobile somewhere is more of a "you do you" thing for me. I'm not always on my phone, when I go out I don't go near it normally but getting a quick message is no problem IMO. For example when plans change. When others are on phones around me I don't find that very annoying, there's much more annoying behaviour.
Personally I hate planning and love chaos so I really like this thing where I see someone online at 2am and they're like "hey why don't you come out to this club". Which happens fairly often.
Humans used to get on ships and sail away, perhaps never to be heard from again. We can absolutely survive several minutes of confusion around eating arrangements. "Text me when you get there." Let's all just calm down and live with a little uncertainty
Go for it but don't force it on me.
There will always be other places that don’t care.
But I think it’s okay to appreciate the world around you and spend time being present while waiting for someone. We used to do this all the time. People watching is fun.
Yeah there'll be others sure.
There's another aspect: these days most people don't like being told what to do. When it infringes on other people's lives like making photos I understand but anything else nope.
I couldn't imagine working in an army either. I'd never let them get away with barking at me.
In 1989 I wrote and posted a paper letter to a college friend of ours in Northern England, asking, hey, around [June date I forget] we will be in London, want to meetup? A while later I get a reply letter saying sure, how about we meet at Piccadilly Circus on this date at this time. I posted an affirmative reply and there was no further communication. We were in Arizona at the time.
On the agreed-to date and time we were there, and so was she.
If we were talk about paper maps, it would blow people's minds. If we were to get further in the weeds and describe how we traveled around communist Czechoslovakia w/o a map, only a phrasebook entitled "Travelers Czech", well...
Ah I forgot! We, without being specific about the date, knew that other college friends of ours, originally from Czechoslovakia, had told us they were going to be in their home town of Olomouc. We got the barest help in Prague with my wife's bad German on how to get there by train. Arrived, got a room, and called them up. For the next week they showed us around the country and visited family and friends.
Other than lousy waiters in Prague we had a terrific adventure. Different times.
But you sure had to able to demonstrate you had integrity in your agreements and were open to changes of plans.
What's amusing is that I've tried to do thing sometimes today, where I make plans with someone a few weeks in advance and then just show up. Only to have them not be there, and when I ask what happened, they said, "oh, I didn't think we were still doing that, you hadn't said anything about it in a while"
It’s kind of funny that business etiquette has moved much more to scheduled meetings even for short discussions, and social life has moved in the opposite direction.
It depends. My friends with kids have everything planned out months in advance. If they're to come out to something they have to have it all scheduled between judo classes and school birthday parties blah blah
The rest of us just wing it. Which I really prefer. I hate having plans. Especially in case I might not feel like it on the night in question.
Yes! Phones should be treated like smoking.
I like this idea. You can use your phone but you have to go outside to do it.
There are a couple of communities that have almost no phone presence. Certain kinds of music festivals are an example, and it's really quite nice not having to worry about being filmed.
Great. It would be nice to normalize that as a feature. A cafe near me sort of has this by simply not offering WiFi and having a sign about it, and it works - there are people having conversations with their kids and with friends and with strangers there, while all other cafes seem to be mostly people on their phones and iPads (especially kids) and laptops. Also we need a total ban on meta glasses and other similar surveillance devices.
You could enforce this by making a farday cage out of the building. I looked into this for an irrational (5G is government poison) family member. I wasn't going to debate how RF works, just buy some points by helping her indulge her fantasy. But actual RF blocking copper mesh material is very expensive. I wonder if this could be done via wallpaper and printing using a conductive ink printed on the same pattern?
You really don't need a full on faraday cage. Signals in the phone frequency range are pretty poor at penetration, especially brick or concrete. I once lived in a house with lath and plaster walls, and I had to leave the office door open to even get wifi in there.
Perhaps some well placed metallic material on or near the windows would suffice?
>I wonder if this could be done via wallpaper and printing using a conductive ink printed on the same pattern?
AFAIK they have to be grounded so it'll be a massive pain to install, even if you can get it printed.
Last I checked there was no consensus on whether or not a Faraday cage needed to be grounded to function properly, which seemed surprising.
Well, what does it mean to be "grounded". There isn't something special about the voltage potential of Earth.
If a Faraday cage blocks interstellar signals only if one part of it is stuck in a ball of mud and rock... well, I have some questions.
There is the possibility of the ground being a return path to the transmitter, but if that were effective, radio infrastructure would interfere world-wide, and you could transmit through the earth's core. And even that argument would suggest that the Faraday cage should be floating, not grounded.
Just run a jammer - much easier and just as illegal - although if you use a busted microwave from the 80s it gives you good plausible deniability.
Faraday cages are passive and not illegal. Jamming is.
>although if you use a busted microwave from the 80s it gives you good plausible deniability.
Not every radio runs off 2.4G, the frequency that microwaves would affect. Even for wifi there's 5ghz and 6ghz bands. For cellphones there are far more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands
SImilar, except their belief is part of a illness that's some kind of dementia. It went further into all kinds of radiations, including things that are meaningless, like the 911 frequency.
It degraded slowly over a decade. It's "stabilized" but just a bunch of word salad.