The silence of humans, wrought by laptops

Coffee houses of yore in India, often nostalgically mentioned by the generation now in their 50s and above, were noisy, bustling places. More important than the beverages on offer —not necessarily only the one implied by the nomenclature —was the heated conversations that were carried on all through the day.

The food and drink bills were nominal enough for the clientele to encompass a fairly diverse cross-section of argumentative Indians. By contrast, cafés frequented today are deathly silent, punctuated not by the eager remonstrations of young people exercised over current affairs — or simply affairs — but the furious tap-tap of keyboards. The interactions of the occupants of café chairs are not with one another but with their laptops, tablets and smartphones.

They may as well have stayed at home and saved on that relatively expensive cuppa that needs to be bought to access the cafés’ ‘free Wi-Fi’. And, in this respect, the situation in India seems to be no different from that of many other countries.

Moves by some artisanal café managements of late to deny free in-house Wi-Fi in order to get customers to talk to each other have had only patchy success. Birdsong, they say, is changing due to the cacophony of technology. Could human speech also eventually devolve due to prolonged periods of technology-induced disuse?