[johndoe489]

> and I'd be confused, why people were laughing and interacting without words. It was a while till I realized that they were chatting on IRC.

Call me oldschool.. I'm just 43 and I still have that split second confusion every time I see someone speak aloud in the metro or tram here with their glassy stare, looking in front of them, while speaking to apparently no one. Every god damn time I'm like "(0.3 seconds) OH..."

But am I not wrong. I don't need to "understand" anything. My body is that through which I know myself and everything else. All of what we call "reality" is experienced through, and as, a body.

If anything technology should honor, and augment that instead of dissociating us.

[timthelion]

That's a bit of a culture shock for me. Because talking on a cell phone is taboo in the Prague mass transport system. People will occasionally have a short and apologetically whispered phone call, but if you talk out loud old people will stare at you angrily and may even psht.

[dazc]

Sounds ideal to me.

In the UK we have 'silent carriages' on trains but after a while the 'loud and impolite' people started to realise there was little or no enforcement so, although we still have them, they are pretty much redundant.

In Spain (where I'm living now) there seems to be a class divide (much more in the UK) regarding etiquette for loud talking and phone conversations. Local busses and trains can be sheer hell yet longer distance services and flights tend to be quite civilised.