Should You Google at Dinner?

Should You Google at Dinner?

By BRUCE FEILER

WHEN I was growing up, we used to play a game that went something like this: If you could invite any five people from history to dinner, who would it be? That game seems to have lost popularity of late, and I’m beginning to think I know why. These days, everybody I know invites the same guest to dinner. Who’s this ubiquitous invitee? The answer is sitting in your pocket.
Google.
Few rules of contemporary society seem more unanimous right now than the strict admonition against using a smartphone at mealtime. Of the 40,569 surveyors who rated restaurants for the 2011 Zagat guide to New York City restaurants, 64 percent said that texting, checking e-mail or talking on the phone is rude and inappropriate in a restaurant. “Emily Post’s Table Manners for Kids,” published in 2009, says bluntly, “Do NOT use your cellphone or any other electronic devices at the table.” As Cindy Post Senning, the book’s co-author, told The New York Times last year, “The family meal is a social event, not a food ingestion event.”
Laurie David, the Oscar-winning producer and a Hollywood doyenne, goes even further in “The Family Dinner,” her new cookbook manifesto. “Do not answer the phone at dinner,” she writes. “Do not bring a phone or BlackBerry to the table. No ringing, vibrating, answering, or texting allowed.” If someone violates this rule, she says, the host should snatch the phone immediately and keep it as long as necessary.
But wait? What if a few clicks of the smartphone can answer a question, solve a dispute or elucidate that thoughtful point you were making? What if that PDA is not being used to escape a conversation but to enhance it?
Consider the case of the banana split. Not long ago, my mother decided to make a big production over the first banana splits for her four young grandchildren. She ordered glass banana split boats, had the children paint their own designs, and then she collected all the ingredients. After dinner, she pulled out a pad of paper. “Now what type of ice cream would you like on your banana split?” she asked. Mint chocolate chip, one person screamed. Raspberry sorbet, another added. Dulce de leche.
“Hold on,” I said. “You can’t make a banana split with all these froufrou flavors. A banana split has to have strawberry, chocolate and vanilla ice cream.”
An uproar ensued, at which point I whipped out my BlackBerry and proposed I look up the origin of the dessert and ascertain the founders’ original intent. An even greater clamor then erupted. As my father put it, how could I ruin this warm family moment with something as unfeeling, untrustworthy and unhurried as a Google search? But, I countered, wasn’t the point of the exercise to teach the children a bit of Americana?
Who was right?
Many people I’ve encountered clearly believe that the blanket prohibition of cellphones at the table also extends to checking, say, what year Qatar will host the World Cup, what is Teddy Roosevelt’s relationship to Franklin or just how old Cher really is. Derek Brown, a bartender in Washington, complained on the Atlantic’s online food section recently that smartphones were “obliterating” the bartender’s traditional role as “the professor of the people.” Once upon a time, he wrote, the barkeep was “expected to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of sports, history, politics and science. If an impasse was met in opposing sides, the attention of both claimants naturally turned toward the bartender. If the bartender said so, you were wrong.”
Another reason to keep search engines out of the salad course is that they have the unfortunate tendency to produce a winner. A friend of mine was recently having a meal with his wife’s sister and her new fiancé. My friend asked his future brother-in-law what song the couple would use as their first dance. “Let My Love Open the Door” by the Who, he said. “That was actually on Pete Townshend’s solo album,” my friend corrected. The fiancé politely disagreed and promptly pulled out his cellphone. After Googling the answer, the outflanked name-that-tuner told my friend curtly, “You’re right,” before proceeding to sulk for the rest of the meal.
Despite these downsides, I’ve found far more people willing to support bringing much needed truth into dinner-table debates. These advocates include some of the most vocal critics of technology’s intrusion on contemporary life. Jaron Lanier, a Silicon Valley inventor who pioneered the term “virtual reality,” warned in his jeremiad, “You Are Not a Gadget,” published earlier this year, that technology is limiting the ability of humans to think for themselves.
Still, even Mr. Lanier, a well-known critic of Facebook and other social media, told me that brandishing my BlackBerry at an ice cream party was not a threat to social cohesion. “In my opinion, if your wife tells you not to Google at dinner, then she’s right,” he said. “If anybody else tells you, then you’re right.” I chuckled knowingly.
“My answer was not a joke,” he said. “It was intended to be instructive about the right way to deal with things. The moment the question becomes about the technology instead of about the people then something has gone horribly wrong.”
Finally I called Ms. David. True to form, Ms. David, a divorced mother of two teenage daughters, began with a passionate screed against bringing screens into family gatherings. “It’s really disturbing what technology is doing to family life,” she said. “Look at the recent Kaiser Family Foundation study that kids spend more than seven and a half hours a day in front of a screen. If we’re not stopping that at dinnertime, we’re in trouble, because you really can’t control it at any other time.”
But to my surprise, when I brought up my banana split standoff, Ms. David, whose book is a delightful compendium of recipes, family games and tips for keeping children at the table, quickly took my side. “First of all, situations where you need a particular piece of information don’t happen all the time,” she said. “If it’s a teaching moment, and you don’t have a dictionary or reference book handy, then, yes, it’s O.K. to Google at dinner.”
“So I’ve gotten a fundamentalist from the religion of no screens to say there is an exception?” I said.
“If it’s a learning moment, go right ahead,” she sad. “I even think there’s an exception for television. If the TV is never on at dinner and it can be invited as a special guest for elections, a debate or a great sports championship, it can be a wonderful thing.”
As for our ice cream episode, I did push forward with my search and quickly landed on a Wikipedia entry that said the banana split was invented in 1904 by a 23-year-old apprentice pharmacist at Tassel Pharmacy in Latrobe, Pa.
“The classic banana split is made with scoops of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream served in a row between the split banana,” the entry said. “Pineapple topping is spooned over the strawberry ice cream, chocolate syrup over the vanilla and strawberry topping over the chocolate. It is garnished with crushed nuts, whipped cream and maraschino cherries.”
Having proved my case, I gloated only mildly, and we all traipsed into the kitchen, only to find that the ice cream my mother had carefully laid out on the counter had completely melted into soup. My daughters quickly dissolved into tears. I may have won the battle, but I still missed the boat.

Bruce Feiler is the author of “America’s Prophet” and “The Council of Dads.” “This Life” appears monthly.