Coffee shop where Wi-Fi stops.

Wi-Fi stop Cafe Picture ╱ Associated Press

Around the world, as the gig economy is booming, many people choose to work at home or in cafes, making them the best "action offices". Now, some cafes want to reverse this trend and make it back to its essence as a place for people to get together, talk and exchange emotions.

■ Such "informal public gathering places," Oldenburg notes, are critical to healthy civilizations, without them, a sense of community dissolves.

With the booming gig economy (gig economy), many cafes are full of people carrying mobile phones and laptops to work, and the whole cafe is very quiet, except for the sound of keystrokes and mouse clicks.

Get rid of 3C and restore the essence of social interaction

Now, some cafe owners are trying to reverse this trend and restore cafes to social situations where they can chat easily, while also providing a "Wi-Fi-free paradise" where customers can temporarily get rid of cold computers and mobile phones and regain the temperature of conversation between people.

Kibbitznest, near Lincoln Park in Chicago, is a cafe that responds to the "No Wi-Fi" campaign. When I walked into the store, I couldn't see Phubber, which is common in ordinary cafes. Many guests got together in twos and threes to talk, some guests sipped red wine or beer while chatting, and a few children gathered around the table to play chess. Boss wife Kostina and husband Louis said the couple decided not to provide wireless Internet to their guests to "remind people of the extreme imbalance between face-to-face communication and communication through technology and electronics."

Kostina said that guests were also happy to find a place to escape their life of staring at the screen and surfing the Internet for a while, and many guests responded, "I'm glad you opened such a store." Another customer, Mulanas, also said that when he first stepped into the cafe, he was ready to come to work with his laptop, but when he found that there was no Internet in the store, he sat down. "I like the idea."

According to a 2016 Nielsen market research report, American adults spend at least 10 hours a day digesting information from various media. Similar Wi-Fi-free cafes are emerging all over the world, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and other countries, in order to balance the work and social styles that rely too much on the Internet and electronics.

American sociologist Ray Oldenburg explained the importance of cafes and places such as pubs, bars and teahouses in his 1989 book "the Best places" (The Great Good Place). He calls places such as cafes the "third place" outside the family and workplace, which is the main place for people to socialize and relax, and is vital to the mental health of individuals and society as a whole. People feel lonely even in groups. The only predictable social outcome of the ever-changing technology is that people are more alienated than ever.

Wei Lun, the owner of August First Cafe in Burlington, northeast Vermont, and her husband Morek said, "at the beginning of our store, we never thought that when you walked into the store, it would be a dead scene." therefore, they decided to stop providing Wi-Fi in 2012 and ban customers from carrying laptops in 2014. At first they did encounter some backlash and resistance. Some customers criticized the rule on the Internet, but most customers gave positive support, and their revenue even increased by 20% compared with the year before.

Indeed, many people go to cafes not to talk, but to find a place to work hard. This trend has long been common around the world, with Ipsos/Reuters / Reuters poll showing that 1 / 5 of people around the world work at home (including in non-office spaces such as cafes), which is particularly popular in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, but less in countries such as Hungary, Germany, Sweden, France and Italy.

No network increases interactive temperature

The Fox in the Snow Cafe (Fox in the Snow Cafe) in Columbus, Ohio, USA, has not provided Wi-Fi since it opened. Exer, one of the shareholders, believes that modern people's life is so convenient that whatever they buy can be sent home, so people go out and go to cafes to interact with others. In order to achieve this goal, they lowered the height of the bar table and removed the price tag of the pastry to encourage customers to ask questions. In order to gather customers, more and more cafes such as Kibbitznest have also begun to host lectures, book clubs and other activities, making the cafe the center of the community.