Jesus fucking christ. 1) Entropy always increases. That's the second law of thermodynamics. 2) Noise is an expression of entropy in mechanical systems. 3) The world has been getting noisier since the invention of the horse. It will continue to do so. I did acoustics for a living for five years. I'm a professional expert on "quiet." And lemme tell ya - some heel bitching about someone else typing too loudly on a MUTHERFUCKING TRAIN is somebody spoiling for a fight. The reason libraries are louder is because they serve primarily immigrant populations with children and children are loud. I suspect our author hasn't been to a library in a while; the books are no longer front and center, the community outreach is. The reason restaurants are louder is that silence is excruciatingly expensive and masking is not. If you play a song you hear the song, not the traffic. The reason people talk more and talk louder in public is that we now carry our own little bubbles of environment with us, and those bubbles often include people on the other end of a cell phone. Assholes that think you're typing too loudly on an Amtrak car aren't looking for a communal environment of silence, they're looking for a solitary environment of silence. Buy some fucking QC2s and shut the fuck up. Communal silence is readily and freely available in church. In reading rooms. In meditation centers. That available on an Amtrak car runs about 55 dBA fast, or roughly as loud as the front seat of a Cadillac. Typing too loud for you? Fucking move over a seat. Sparking a confrontation because someone is typing too loud is just a dick move... and anyone who celebrates dick moves is adding to the entropy that increases the noise that makes shit like this happen.
Yeah, but name one thing an old person won't complain about. Everyone had the get-off-my-lawn geezer living down the street when we were kids. Complaining about typing is way over the top, for sure, but I have no problem with a rule that bans talking on the phone in designated areas. Hearing one half of a conversation can be maddening, because it is background noise, but its also coherent. So it grabs your attention in a way white noise doesn't. Having one car where cell phones aren't allowed seems like a good compromise to me, but the limitations should be reasonable. Maybe my typing bothers you, but you shifting in your chair bothers me; where do you draw the line?
>Yeah, but name one thing an old person won't complain about. And I'm totally cool with that. There is, however, quite a difference between "humoring" the old coot and celebrating the old coot. If the "quiet car" bans cell phone conversation, cell phone conversation should be discouraged and forbidden; that's pretty clear. Thing is, if "typing" isn't on the list of proscribed activities, getting up in someone's grille for typing IS NOT AN ACT WORTHY OF CELEBRATION. This article is a lament for a world that never existed reliant on a code of conduct that should not be encouraged. That's my objection.
My mom is a librarian and trust me the loud people are native Americans talking on their cellphones with no regard for the fact that they are in a place where they should probably take their conversations outside. It's a daily battle to try and get people not to announce what they had or will have to for lunch to every one in the place. The common every day conversations aren't event he worst of it, my mom has had to ask people to please talk about the sex they had last night out side, or in the lobby rather then sharing it with every patron in the place. Yes kids are loud in the library, but I think most librarians are ok with that within reason.
To add to this: Modern libraries are one of the few remaining places where you don't get thrown out just for loitering. They're free wifi-enabled, air-conditioned spaces. I worked at one, in an extremely affluent area, for several years. Our problem was, partially, with children, as kleinbl00 says -- though that was mitigated by the partitioning of the children's section -- but overwhelmingly with homeless people who had nowhere else to be. We couldn't throw them out until /after/ they had already disturbed the supposed inherent quiet of the library, and most did, inevitably, because the majority had mental illnesses and no family. I talked to dozens of them. My point with all this is that a large part of kleinbl00's post above is overly general. (Silence is freely available at reading rooms? We had a reading room, even though I was under the impression that libraries really were reading rooms anyway, at my old job -- and people went in their to make calls. What can ya do.) I side with the article on this one.
The buzzing from people's headsets can be really annoying, so I'm not surprised by the typing being irritating -- but these things are not irritating to everyone. We do not all hear the same way or the same things. There's a subtle hearing condition that I have whereby I find it difficult to select out some background noises. I don't know what it's called, but I've read about it and have been increasingly meeting people with similar preferences. Consequently, it's really really hard to find a restaurant quiet enough to have a good conversation. In a noisy restaurant, I can hear the person I'm with, but I have to focus so much that it is exhausting. Teaching is difficult because if people whisper to one another (and why shouldn't they?), I tend to lose my train of thought. Awareness of hearing differences helps, but I can't seem to get my current husband to stop biting his nails in the opera. -- You'd think that would be pretty quiet, right, compared to the opera and the orchestra. But it totally rattles me. All this AND no sense of smell. We all perceive differently.
I've ridden on Amtrak trains many, many times. You are right, the train itself is naturally extremely loud. If you're looking for peace and quiet on a train?? You're insane!The reason libraries are louder is because they serve primarily immigrant populations with children and children are loud. I suspect our author hasn't been to a library in a while; the books are no longer front and center, the community outreach is
This is true. I am becoming increasingly aware of what the modern Library is as my daughter gets older. Although I am not an immigrant, I do take my daughter to the library for story time once a week. There, books are read aloud to children in common areas. Also children sit at computers and play games and watch videos. I find that many people visit the library to get DVDs. While the modern Library is not a loud place, it certainly isn't a place where someone quickly snaps you and mean glance if you're talking. Those days, thankfully, are over.
I love riding the train. On the West Coast it's kind of a patchwork of reasonability, though. Seattle to Portland is $45 and can be done quicker than driving while Seattle to Vancouver is $30 and an absolutely lovely (and quick) ride... so long as BNSF isn't running freight on the rails that day in which case your $30 ticket becomes a bus ticket and I shit you not, our driver got lost on the way to the station once and we had a miniature mutiny as everyone argued about how to get there. On the other hand, LA to Seattle costs more than flying and takes three.fucking.days. LA to Lompoc costs $18 but they only run the train once per day so you can't go up for a launch unless you plan on camping. They're actually quieter than jets, but they aren't quieter than libraries. And, psychoacoustically speaking, "speech" is something that cuts through quite nicely because we're tuned to listen to it. "Typing" on the other hand is background noise and vanishes completely unless you're seeking it out. Libraries are a great place to access multiculturalism. So are community centers. I had no idea how many Russians we had in our neighborhood until I hit the swimming pool...
I love trains too. Check out this piece I wrote about how to take the Empire Builder from Whitefish to Ann Arbor. -It's a 36 hour trip. Wonderful as a college student, perhaps not so much now?