Today I found out that Bob Dylan has acted on the scourge of concerts.
"IMPORTANT: This concert is a “PHONE FREE SHOW”, this means that phones, smart glasses, and smart watches are not allowed in the hall during the concert.
How it works? Once you arrive at the venue, Yondr (the phone pouch company engaged on this concert) will have its dedicated staff available to help you put your phone in a locked and secure pouch, which you will keep with you throughout the evening."
I wondered about some very obvious issues with this. Yondr seem to have anticipated these and have answers for most of them.
That said I’m not sure Yondr venue staff having hand-held unlocking devices would have been much use at the Bataclan or Ariana Grande gig atrocities
Same argument would go for school shootings where the phones are in lockers.
At least you have your phone and presumably you find a way of ripping through the bag in that type of emergency.
Hard tickets preferred and nobody under 30 can buy a beer because they don’t carry cards or cash, just their phone. I guess they wouldn’t be there in the first place.
Indeed it would.
You and I would improvise a bag-ripper perhaps. I have a friend who took his 11 year old daughter to the Ariana Grande gig. He’s never been into real detail about it - apparently they saw unspeakable things and all these years later he is still somewhat traumatised and she more so. He said there was complete chaos. Some people will be Bruce Willis/Die Hard about it but I fear plenty wouldn’t.
It’s interesting looking at the internet history. Yondr has been deployed in US schools for quite a while. It seems they’ve been in a significant arms race with that most implacable and resourceful of opponent - the pissed-off teenager. Quite a strong element has been simply making the implementation and operation of the scheme as inconvenient and burdensome as possible for the school.
Will they include an AI chatbot, I wonder (trained by exposure to thousands of soon-to-be-redundant cabbies) ?
I saw a Waymo on St James a few days ago.
Its constant readjustment of direction in West End traffic and people wandering around was… off-putting.
I don’t use taxis or Ubers etc. however as a pedestrian I’d still be concerned about the robot bastard running me down.
They’re coming for us, I tell ya !
Why not employ some vicious thugs to eject those waving a phone around? Good call on the revenue fall off if the yout’ can’t access their substitute universe.
That’s one thing they won’t do, which is going to make crossing the road really easy.
Eventually i suspect a law will need to be introduced to stop pedestrians just crossing the road at will.
Well be fun in the meantime.
I had a hard ticket for Nick Cave and it caused a minor delay as the bloke scanning tickets hadn’t seen one that day and he had to find another setting to scan the barcode (rather than QR Code).
To be honest if people kept their phones in their pockets, ( people taking the occasional pic isn’t a problem), It is when you can’t see the stage through the forest of phones (and tablets) recording the gig that I get pissed off.
Instagram etc was full of very poor quality recordings the next day, not sure why, unless it is a way of saying ‘I was there’
“Boeing added that the inspections would provide multiple opportunities to identify and correct problems before any cracks exceed critical length”
Erm… isn’t that zero mm? 
