Per Square Mile. Housing. New Stories From 'Urban Agriculture Notes'. Oobject - Daily User Ranked Lists. Thought Catalog. Help Slate set some ground rules for cell phone etiquette. - By Farhad Manjoo. Imagine you've just sat down to dinner with your spouse. Let's say it's a weeknight and there's nothing particularly special about this meal—you're at your own dining room table, neither one of you has slaved in the kitchen all day, and you don't have anything especially important to discuss. Halfway through dinner, your phone buzzes with a text message. Do you reach for it? And if so, do you reply? I'm asking because I got into an argument over this scenario on Twitter last week.
The discussion was sparked by the New York Times' Nick Bilton, who, in an online chat with ABC's Diane Sawyer, argued that texting in company is becoming more and more socially acceptable. Bilton, who is 33 and is both a user interface designer and a journalist, says that he wouldn't check his phone if he were at lunch with his boss, but he has no problem doing so when he's eating with tech-savvy people his own age. Follow I was surprised. That's where you come in, dear readers. Now, this won't be easy.