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Comment by alangibson | Hacker News Reader

While I'm definitely on Jack's side spiritually, Yondr is not an efficient solution. We need to consciously and intentionally establish a norm of 'no phones' in certain group situations, just like how many areas have established a norm of 'no smoking'.

And, yes, it's true that 'no smoking' often has local law to help drive the idea home, but it's not like there's a cop monitoring the smoking situation in every public venue. Shame, ridicule, side-eye and public opinion are really what keep behavior in line.

It's not hard to do. I remember long ago that the famous Alamo Drafthouse movie theater, which serves beer and booze, had problems with people talking. They started playing a stock reel of people getting their asses kicked overlaid with "if you talk we'll kick your ass out" before the movie started. Now it's just accepted fact that you keep quiet no matter how many Lone Star tallboys you've had.

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Except it is hard to do because in this case where it's not an obvious problem to the people around you (like smoking), everyone agrees with the rule of no cellphones but thinks they're a special case. I was at a Bill Burr show where he caught a woman on her phone. She was checking her home security camera. For her dog. Twice.

Phones are clearly some step on the road to handing off part of our memory and socializing to a device that helps us, but it has completely changed our perspective. I remember reading a blog post by Charlie Stross a few years back about the idea of never being lost again (because of GPS + phones) and it seemed like a nice step in human innovation, but what I've come to realize is there's a negative to every positive phones bring: now I am liable to soil myself when I lose GPS in a strange place. And I'm at least old enough to know about road atlases.

I have a four year old and I can only imagine what kind of complex we are going to give her with the idea you always need to be able to reach them, the babysitter, the venue they're at, whomever. My wife and I have agreed to try hard not to do that; I assume if we succeed we will get in trouble with child protective services or her school at some point.

Yeah, I think a similar video played before the start of the show, about how you paid all this money to be here, why see it through a small screen as if you were on YouTube, combined with a few people actually getting kicked out, would work wonders.

They can have a moment in the show for everyone who "needs" a picture or a brief video can take one. And just let everyone know that the whole show will be on YouTube in good quality later-- no need to take your own.

>> And just let everyone know that the whole show will be on YouTube in good quality later-- no need to take your own.

Um, it increases costs a lot to film a show, you realize this, right?

And if the show was available on YouTube for free, don't you think it would potentially impact sales?

Well, I think YouTube for stage acts is just like Streaming is to musicians. Most of them make the majority of their income by live performances, but the streaming is where its at otherwise.

"Why bother going to the live show when I can sit at home watching a Youtube video instead?" is something I don't think many people think. The video doesn't replace the experience.

It does increase costs, and not everyone will want to do it or have the means. But it doesn't have to be a full on video production. It can just be a phone mounted near the soundboard, plugged into the soundboard, so you can actually get great sound. I love listening to "live" music on YouTube, but it's not a replacement for actually attending a show.

  about how you paid all this money to be here

This is a reaction I've heard from self-important attendees who insist on recording despite posted rules: "I paid good money to be here, so I get to do what I want."

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