An essay in the New York Times this week—entitled I Reviewed Restaurants for 12 Years. They’ve Changed, and Not for the Better (🎁)—laments how technology has slowly dehumanized the dining experience.
It is just the latest in a series of changes that have gradually and steadily stripped the human touch and the human voice out of restaurants. Each of these changes was small, but together they’ve made going out to eat much less personal. Meals are different now, and our sense of who we are is different, too.
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In my first few years on the job, I thought of restaurants as one of the few places left where our experiences were completely human.
It’s something I’ve noticed too, and wrote a little about earlier this year: Two Men in a McDonald’s in Small Town America.