4,000 Years of Taverns, and We Ruined Them With Smartphones
or...why Thomas Paine would hate your iPhone.
I recently read Common Sense by Thomas Paine1 which I feel I should have read years ago. At 250 years old, there are a lot of good reminders in there of things that we’ve forgotten or taken for granted.
But something that truly struck me actually came in the 1995 preface, written by Gregory Tietjen (emphasis mine):
Friends said of Paine that he was a restless reader, impatient with books, and happiest when buried in newspapers or engaged in conversation driven by drink and a tavern’s conviviality.
What a deeply social concept: it’s always worth making time for good conversation over a drink.
I fear we’re losing that due to a couple of reasons…one being the phone.
This is actually something How I Met Your Mother addressed in 2011. It seemed the bar booth debate was dead. One would start, and then you’d just look something up on your phone.
Today, it’s even worse. When there’s any lull in conversation, people reach for their phone; God forbid there’s a moment of silence where we’re left with our thoughts. When our phone buzzes, we immediately prioritize the person/creator/thing that’s not with us over the people with us.
As a result, I worry we’re not having good, in-person debates. The kind that force us to think on our feet, and challenge our views in a way that makes us reflect on them — not with personal attacks, but by simply removing us from the media- and algorithm-driven echo chamber we tend to live in.
An Actual Discussion I had at a Conference
Earlier this year, I had an honest-to-goodness discussion with someone who had fairly opposing political views from me while we were at a conference. But we didn’t attack each other. We didn’t show each other histrionic or fake clips from our phones.
We had a 30 minute, uninterrupted conversation where we tried to learn each other’s perspectives. Then we came away from it with a little more empathy, and some homework for each of us.
We were able to do this for a few reasons:
People are generally more respectful in person, where they’re not protected by a keyboard and a screen.
We could pick up on each other’s body language; not just the words we were saying, but how we were saying them, both in physical delivery and intonation.
We couldn’t just go and immediately find something that “irrefutably” proved us right; we actually had to rely on our beliefs and thoughts — not just what we thought about other people’s opinions.
We had to be ready to actually stand by what we were saying.
This is what Paine liked about the tavern — a general conviviality you don’t often get on social media, where people can twist your words and your meaning, and quickly draw a mob to pounce on your twisted words.
This is honestly the root of another goal of mine: to leave my phone at home, or in the car, more. I want to have more engaging conversations without having the world’s most intrusive device in my pocket.
Which is why I have a proposal.
My Proposal: A Device-less Tavern
Picture this: you walk up to a bar, they check your ID, and instead of hitting you with a cover charge, they give you a number. That number corresponds with the locker they’ll put your phone in, where they’ll keep it until you’re ready to leave.
Once you walk in, you don’t see a bunch of faces aglow with the cold, blue light of their iPhones. You don’t see one-sided conversations where one person is talking while the other is “just checking their phone real quick.” You don’t see someone asking ChatGPT who that actor in Independence Day was.
You see people looking at each other, talking, having lively conversations where they are fully present. So many engaged in conversation driven by drink and a tavern’s conviviality; Thomas Paine would be elated.
This isn’t hard to do. In fact, I’ve already outlined how to leave your phone at home, or in the car:
Tell your loved ones and babysitter where you’re going to be.
Give them the number in case of an emergency.
That’s it. That’s the entire list.
Sure, you may also have to get cash or something. Maybe a notebook and pen. But we’ve operated this way since the opening of the first taverns in…._Ancient Greece_. Some estimate the first taverns are actually like 4,000 years old.
So 4,000 years minus…30? I think you’ll be OK for a few hours.
Now, in doing some research, I did come across a few bars in the USA that are already doing this, to varying degrees of success.
Hush Harbor in Washington DC, for example, locks phones in a magnetic pouch. Same thing goes for Antagonist in Charlotte. Several bars in NYC offer the same thing.
I want to see more of this. More bars and restaurants that ban the use of phones inside. And I want more people to want this.
But if you don’t live close to one of these phone-free taverns, how can you make it happen?
How We Can Do This in Our Lives
Unfortunately, you can’t just stand at the entrance telling people to put their phones in your bag…for a lot of reasons.
But you can get your friends to agree: everyone leaves their phones in the car. Smart watches too. That way the temptation isn’t even there.
I promise you’ll have better, deeper, more interesting conversations.
Think about it: when was the last time you were out with friends and had a conversation where you were all fully engaged the entire time?
I tried very hard not to open this with a Hamilton reference.