No Phone, No Social Safety Net

On cue, the room fell silent. A man seated to my left at a long wooden table began to scratch at a piece of paper with a coloring pencil. To my right, another guy picked up a book. Across the way, someone buried themselves in a puzzle. We had gathered to take part in an unfamiliar ritual: being extremely offline.

I arrived at 6:45 p.m. that Monday evening at a nondescript office block in Dalston, a recently gentrified area of East London. I was greeted at the door by the event host, who was wearing a T-shirt that read, "The Offline Club." I handed them my phone, which they stowed in a specially built cabinet—a sort of shrunken-down capsule hotel.

The entryway opened into a narrow room with high concrete walls painted white, with space enough for about 40 people to sit. The wooden table ran down the center of the room, bordering both a couch area and a kitchenette stocked with herbal teas and other drinks. Two plywood staircases led up to mezzanines dressed with patterned fabric cushions and strung with soft lighting. On the opposite wall, floor-to-ceiling windows were lined with ficus and other broad leafy plants.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.