Image from The Gin Tub official website - Steve Tyler of The Gin Tub said mobile phones ruined our social lives and killed the pub experience
- He built a Faraday cage into the walls and ceiling of the bar to stop the mobile signals
- A Faraday cage is a 19th-century invention electronic shield
- Tyler wanted to encourage his bar’s patrons to socialize the old way
Believing our generation is becoming very dependent on our smartphones and heavily influenced by social media, which in turn ruins our social lives, as well as the pub experience, the owner of a newly-opened bar in Brighton, England, found a way to encourage his patrons to socialize the old way.
According to an article published by BBC News, Steve Tyler, the owner of The Gin Tub in Brighton, England, built an electronic shield, known as a Faraday cage, into the walls and ceiling of the bar to stop the mobile signals.
The Faraday cage is a 19th-century invention, which operates because an external electrical field causes the electric charges within its conducting material to be distributed such that they cancel the field’s effect in the cage’s interior.
Tyler said that rather than telling their patrons they can’t use their phones, they just basically disabled them.
On the bar’s official website, it is written under ‘House Rules’: “We like our patrons to enjoy the company of the people they are with not the online people they are not with. We are trying to bring back the art of conversation.
We have installed a Faraday Cage (by no means of military standards) so this does mean your phone signal is weaker. If you sit by the windows you will get a signal or if you really need to make a call please just take the 10 steps outside.
Let’s all look up and talk.”
Another special feature of the bar is the presence of retro-style rotary phone, and they are all connected through a landline, which can be used to place orders and call the other patrons sitting on other tables.
The Gin Tub has been receiving positive reviews since it opened last July 22.
Tyler believes that the people are actually loving the change.
NPR quoted him as saying: “I think I’ve hit a nerve in the world, that I think it’s rude, and I think society has accepted people on their phones in bars and in places where it’s socially unacceptable,” he says.
Post a Comment