undefended / undefeated

This is undefended / undefeated, a newsletter by Sara Hendren on design, education, disability, technology, and related ideas. At some point you signed up for it; to unsubscribe, head to the bottom of this post. For my subscribers using screenreaders and others who love audio: I’ve got a voiced version of this post just below this paragraph — let me know if your software is not able to locate it. And the alt text edit function isn’t working, so I’ve got image descriptions in audio and in the captions this time.

Faro café, in Harvard Square, gets its name from the Spanish word for “lighthouse,” and it’s got a no-laptops policy that is gently, but strictly, enforced.

You can look at your phone. You can use a little gaming tablet. But they’ve outlawed laptops — upright and rectangular cognitive anchors that suck all energy toward themselves. Multiplied across a room, laptops erect an office where a café had been. And Faro is trying to keep the office at bay.

But the office-style café is really great, you say. It is! You can go a few doors down in a couple directions and find some good ones. But Faro has their little manifesto printed and hung on one wall — unobtrusive, easy to miss — and they just want something else happening in the space.

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