“Come up with a crazy business idea.”

That was the WordPress prompt today.

So here goes. Conversation cafes. This would be a Starbucks-like franchise (Tim Hortons-like for any Canadian readers).

You could even set up one of those “mug walls” where regular customers come in, grab a mug and a coffee. Like the good old days.

You could still get your long, tall, short, skinny, grande, cappuccino or moccaccino with or without whipped cream and cinnamon. The choices would be as generous as they would be in any urban coffee bar burning through mounds of ground coffee hour after hour for a grateful paying public.

Now, here’s the wrinkle. My conversation cafes would not allow any technological devices to darken its doors.

No cellphones or any other kind of communications technology. No iPads. No laptops.

The speed at which technology has become central to our lives to the point of absolute necessity is astonishing. So much so, it is hard to remember what life was like before technology.

Rectangular paper maps to get directions to go somewhere? Unwieldy and messy. I could never refold the blasted things the right way.

A busy signal on the other end of the phone line? “Oh. S/he is talking to someone else. I’ll call him or her back later.”

Remember coffee dates or dinner dates where getting together to have a conversation was the main idea? Neither do I. Not well anyway.

Like many Boomers, I grieve the loss of conversation as much as I grieve the loss of cursive writing. I am glad my adult children were exposed to it and can sign checks when and if needed. Oh wait. Checks. Also an out-of-date twentieth century business practice.

So my conversation cafes would have a nostalgic vibe, obviously. Big hair. Hoop earrings. High heels. The women would dress retro, too.

The conversationalists might either know, or not know, each other. And if they didn’t know each other, they would not be allowed to look up their profile picture and bio on Facebook, LinkedIn or X account. (For the uninformed, Twitter recently became known only as “X.” High marks for originality there, Elon Musk.)

Imagine the thrill of sitting down with a near stranger and not really knowing whether he (or she – no gender bias) was a potential axe murderer.

We’d go by the old cues. Through conversation. What do you do for a living? Who do we know in common? Where did we grow up? What school or schools did we go to? Not bad for a first conversation cafe “getting to know you” date script.

These days, the strength (or even possibility) of a first meeting depends on how closely your profile pic matches what you really look like.

If you look wildly off the mark in person, you can be ghosted before the connection is even made. Not bad in terms of efficiency. Kinda lame in terms of real human connection.

So this is an admittedly desperate attempt to steer our society back to the exchange of pleasantries that were so vital at a different time in history.

It is a call to insert humanity back into every day social discourse. An impractical attempt to hold apart the walls of technology’s inevitable march before it utterly engulfs all of collective humanity.

So my solution is conversation cafes. A place to talk. Hang out. Chill. People watching. Remember that? Conversation cafes is a wild, and probably impractical, business solution to an evolving social problem.

I admit it is hard to conceive of a world now where technology isn’t front and center in our lives. Our secretaries. Our pals. Our lifeline. Our dictionaries, encyclopedia and old wives’ tales all rolled up in one tidy and portable package.

So a conversation cafe where no technology is allowed is a stretch. And likely, if I’m being completely realistic, no business either.

I’ll admit even the notion of promoting human connection sounds old-fashioned and irrelevant these days. Which is seriously sad.