Google's gift: Free WiFi in 47 airports 

In a related story, this guy thinks airports and retail stores should already be providing free Wi-Fi service.  

And I could NOT agree more.

In a related story , the third American pilot in 13 months was arrested for being drunk on duty at London's Heathrow Airport and thrown in jail.

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By the way, as much as I like airports that offer free wireless, I'm not convinced it's actually the best thing for the human race. I think we should be encouraging people to interact with each other instead of burying themselves in their goddamn laptops and refusing to utter a syllable to each other. Easy access to connectivity is driving people apart, farther into their own private universes, not bringing them together.

It shouldn't be considered rude to say "hi" to the person sitting next to you, but it's fast becoming so. That's not only sad, it's scary. I'm sick of the dirty looks I get when I'm just looking for a little human connection.

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Nonstop - I ranted about this for awhile now, and it includes cell phones as well.

Over a decade ago when I was last in college, I remember the days when you actually talked to people when you got out of class. Now, watch people when they get out of class. They immediately turn on their stupid cell phone.

Lame.

Cell phones != face to face human interaction. It's funny, this younger generation is socially retarded and it's due to a combination of cell phones and the internet.

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Forcing people to be social will get you the very same results as you are already getting, though Nonstop..

As far as this younger generation being socially handicapped, I'd have to disagree. Well, mainly to the reasoning behind it. Yes, the internet/cell phone era helps, but they use that stuff because, in my honest opinion, they are uninspired. Look, you have kids that want to have fun. They look at their parents, and see two people spending their LIVES at work, trying to pay the bills. Why do you think video games are so popular (even among adults)? Why do we see such a huge population of college/university students partying so much?

We have a generation of people who work their tails off, and when they are home, sit around the boob-tube. The generation just below that sees it, and thinks, 'how boring.. I don't want to live life that way.' And they don't. I know, because I'm apart of that generation.. along with my younger sisters, who are more enveloped with that mindset.

It's almost like the Matrix.. Generation Y looks at generation X and sees how they are all plugged in. Given the choice between the red pill and the blue pill.. They choose the pill that doesn't have them being plugged in. And the generation X looks at Y and says, "Lazy. Socially inept. Unintelligent. etc. etc."

No. We are just uninspired. We don't want your life. We don't want to watch people on TV live an adventure. We want to have an adventure our own.

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Forcing people? How saying "Hi" with a warm smile forcing people to be social? If they don't want to respond, they don't have to. That's not my point. My point is it's ridiculous that it's become rude in many places to simply be a warm and friendly person. Because everyone insists on living in their own little shells.

I was in the campus coffee shop the other day. I saw a girl sitting on a chair, immersed in a crossword puzzle book, with headphones in her ears, and texting in between letters. At least three layers of insulation warning everyone from talking to her. Walking between classes, I see people with headphones in their ears, texting or talking on the phone.

It just feels hostile and lonely. I'm sorry I can't go to your keggers every night, but that seems to be the only place to meet people these days.

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I didn't mean to imply that saying 'Hi' was forcing people. I was referring to your comment;

Not that encouragement would be forceful, but I bet there'll be more than a few people that would interpret it as forceful.

I agree, that people are re-donk-ulous. Have you ever ridden in an elevator more than 3 stories and watch the other people? If everyone is sober, everyone is standing there like zombies staring up at the numbers. I like to jump in an elevator and instead of facing the doors, I face everyone else. And talk to them. It's hilarious watching them squirm. It's not like I'll ever see them again, so I don't care. And if I do.. Again, I don't care.

I guess my point here is, if you want to 'encourage' socialism (haha!) with people, then join me in being 'THAT guy'. It's the only way to get people out of their shells.



Yeah, I can imagine it.. I see it every day (well, almost every day) as well. Typically, if someone is like that in public, they are probably not the type of friend I want anyway, so I move on. Being at a school can make that hard, I bet, though.

I feel for ya, man.

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I dunno.

Who are they texting? Who are they surfing the net with? It isn't all solipsism. How much of it is a function of the social network simply not being synchronous with the physical space they happen to be occupying?

A few years ago the college I teach at moved from 10 minutes between class periods to 15. As a result (since I often teach two classes back to back, by preference), I get to observe students inbetween classes a lot. And I've repeatedly been struck by how much more they were engaged with each other (despite the occasional cell phone ringing) than I remember being when I was a student.

Now, that could be because I was shy/anti-social/etc when I was a student, and so I'm projecting my memories on my classmates back in the day. But compared to where I was at 18-22, these students are socially very much engaged.

Also, part of it may be a consequnece of the multitasking people seem to live by now. When you try to converse with someone, you aren't just interrupting one thing that they already have their attention on; you're interrupting several at once.

I've always hated people asking me questions while I'm reading, at least if I'm fully engaged with the reading. But when I'm sitting at my desk in one of my rare productive moments, I'm balancing my attention between six firefox windows, many of them multi-tabbed, a couple text files, three or four mindmaps, and probably email on another screen. But I'm claustrophobic, so I always keep my door open; I can't retreat into a cave.
I need white noise or something. But when someone knocks on the door or stops at the table where I'm doing all this....I have to interrupt all that flow.

Not saying everyone texting/listening to the ipod is me. God forbid.

But I'm also not convinced they're all that anti-social/a-social/etc either. Its just that, of the 3000 or whatever messages they encounter every day, mine or yours just aren't going to be up on the priority list as high as we'd like.

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Phatic communion, Non. Add it to the thesaurus, lol.

Knew this had to be worth a look up...

"Phatic communication, or small talk, is an important social lubricant. In the words of Erving Goffman, 'The gestures which we sometimes call empty are perhaps in fact the fullest things of all.'"
(Diana Boxer, Applying Sociolinguistics, John Benjamins, 2002)

The problem is one of lubrication.

p.s. In other words, the reason I never get any can be traced to my hatred of small talk.

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Wade, I've had girls admit to me that they're not talking to anyone when they walk down the sidewalk on the phone -- they just do it to avoid looking like a "loser" who has no friends. Of course, since Midwesterners are reared to be so goddamn polite, all they're doing is guaranteeing they won't make any new friends, because no one will dare to interrupt their ostensible phone call. I also know for a fact that some of those people aren't actually playing music; they just have 'phones in their ears to "look busy."

But behold the power of social conditioning. Even I, knowing those facts, won't interrupt them.

I hate the Midwest.

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NSD,
Far be it from me to chastise someone for hating the Midwest. I am *so* tired of Iowa.

Yesterday afternoon I was staring out the window across all the "green space" at the center of our campus. I was trying to understand the paths people follow, why some follow the sidewalks, others cross the grass.

Most people expect it is in general going to be a "shortest distance between two points" but it's not clearly that at all. A lot of it (i hypothesize) is well-trained people "keeping to the rules" of "staying on the sidewalks" (more so here than in such 'fuck the world and its rules' places like Leicester Square or wherever).

But then I started noticing something else. Almost every walker was a singleton; and they almost never took paths where they met someone else along the path.

Unless they were handsfree (rare here), they weren't talking on cell phones (less than 5% of total observed). Couldn't tell about earphones at the distance I was. But it was clear they were almost all taking paths that wouldn't intersect with each other.

Now part of this was due to being a fairly low traffic part of the day. The "movie theater" principle: when people go to a movie theater, they tend to sit "apart" from each other, too. until the congestion is such that they have no choice.

But I think it's interesting because we're not talking a campus of complete strangers here. This is a place that trumpets its "small town-ness", it's "community" whenever it has the chance. It's part of how we justify charging 40K/year for spending time with us.

And it was a time of day when the pace is probably as low as it gets for a large fraction of students and faculty (i.e., between 3 and 5 p.m.)

And it was a pretty nice fall afternoon, too, so there was no "lets get out of this dreary weather ASAP" operating either.

Yet despite all that, the traffic at the center of campus, at the center of the "community," follows the movie theater model.

Of course I can't really cast stones. I was standing by a window at the end of all....by myself, with my back to anyone that might appear elsewhere in the hall.

Until I answered the phone.

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I think you're right but on a different level. I don't think people aren't socializing, but the way we socialized has evolved. Face-to-face interaction still happens but not in physical space. I have friends that talk to each other through Skype via webcam and they have conversations even though one is here in Milwaukee and the other one is in Italy. Part of my dad's job is to setup web conferences for various people stationed around the world. You'll have people from many different countries all talking as if they were in a meeting in the same room because of webcams and the capabilities of the internet.

I myself grew up socially on the internet, which makes me seem retarded sometimes in person. I'm shy with new people but open up once I get to know someone. However when I'm on the internet I can immediately be myself because of the anonymity granted by it. It allows me to cautiously approach a group of people without putting myself in an awkward position. I would come home from high school and immediately hop on Ventrilo to talk to members of my gaming clan--there were over 30 of us and I could always count on someone to be there to converse with.

I agree with you that physical social interaction is lacking and because of the way I grew up I lack a few conversational skills. But at the same time I have hundreds of friends that I know through the internet in communities like here at PH. I still have my "real-life" friends that I spend a lot of my time with but I enjoy socializing on the internet as well.

To be honest though I despise sites like MySpace and Facebook. I feel like nobody is genuine on them--it's pretty much a space to advertise yourself so people end up only using the information or pictures that "sell." I treat my page as a joke, in fact my religion is listed as "Green Bay Packers" despite the fact that I'm a pretty strong atheist (Green Bay Packers pretty much qualifies as my religion).

I don't have alot of friends here at my college. When I'm by myself, I use my cell to not look like a loser. 😞 ....It seems everyone else has alot of people to text, so I kind of feel like an outsider

All you're doing is perpetuating your lack of friends by a) not reaching out and saying "hi" to those around you and b) making yourself look unapproachable and unsociable. No one really assumes you're a loser just because you're not talking on the phone.

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