David Cain at Rapitude wrote a thousand words about his experience at a concert that was set up as a “No Phones” experience.

Our phones drain the life out of a room. They give everyone a push-button way to completely disengage their mind from their surroundings, while their body remains in the room, only minimally aware of itself. Essentially, we all have a risk-free ripcord we can pull at the first pang of boredom or desire for novelty, and of course those pangs occur constantly.

He also peeks into the future and sees this idea:

I imagine that in another decade or two we’ll look at 2010s-era device use something like we do now with cigarette smoking. I was born in 1980, and I remember smoking sections on planes, which is unthinkable today. I wonder if today’s kids will one day vaguely remember the brief, bizarre time when people didn’t think twice about lighting up a screen in the middle of a darkened concert hall.

I think he has a real point. It’s hard to look back and not see how my grandkids will view our interconnected, always-on boredom-eliminating activities.