As communications professionals we know how crucial it is to have constant access to our outside world – whether it be via phone, email, social media platforms, or in our case, let’s face it – a surgically attached earpiece.
This habit (or rather instilled need) often discourages us from appreciating life as it presents itself in pure form. A time in our day without a smartphone or an electronic signal is an unfamiliar, anxiety-inducing feeling. This constant necessity to check, check and re-check our mobile devices has sent restaurant owners around the globe into a bitter rage, according to this article we saw posted on Springwise.
Springwise highlighted an example from a Canadian café where all access to phone and wireless signals were blocked (oh no!) inside the coffee shop’s deliberate cage-like shield encasing. The experimental project was designed to see if customers could actually sit together and give each other their truly undivided attention.
It is strange to think that not too long ago the only threat to dinner conversation was the landline phone in the kitchen and that people went to coffee shops a la Friends to actually engage in group conversation. It certainly doesn’t hurt to stop and think about the world that once existed without constant connectivity; to appreciate the people within our immediate reach.