![]() ![]() The quiet was codified through a state law and the surrounding 13,000-square-mile National Radio Quiet Zone, created in 1958. The National Science Foundation chose Green Bank as the site’s location because it was one of the most naturally quiet areas in the eastern US, in a remote, isolated valley surrounded by mountains and without many people or much industry. How did the observatory come to land in Green Bank?įounded in 1956, the Green Bank Observatory is the oldest federal radio astronomy facility in the US and the longtime home to some of the world’s premier telescopes for studying the cosmos. The family installed the new modem, even though they only really wanted wired Internet, which underscores how it’s become nearly impossible to not have Wi-Fi today, even in the Quiet Zone. The choice was to get Wi-Fi or not have Internet. Their modem had broken, and their Internet provider said it could only replace it with a new one that automatically creates a hotspot. Just the other week, I was speaking with one of the last families without Wi-Fi in Green Bank. I’ve actually found it difficult to locate anybody without Wi-Fi. And keep in mind this is a rural community of only about 250 people. Five years before I arrived, the observatory was already counting about 70 Wi-Fi hotspots within 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) of its telescopes. While innumerable articles have touted the West Virginia town of Green Bank as an offline oasis, smartphones are not banned and there’s a lot of Wi-Fi, despite rules against it. What are some of the most interesting/unexpected things you learned about this town during your time there? In 2017, I read that one town in America actually banned smartphones, cell service, and Wi-Fi because of the presence of a major radio astronomy observatory. I’ve come to feel like a kind of hermit in plain sight because of my stubborn refusal to carry a device that 97 percent of Americans have in hand. I haven’t owned a cellphone since 2009, in part because I think it’s a devilish device that hijacks our attention, erodes in-person conversation, and undermines our ability to live in the moment. What inspired you to investigate the Quiet Zone? Journalist Stephen Kurczy, who doesn't own a cellphone, decided to immerse himself in the Quiet Zone to see if it was really the off-the-grid haven he had been led to believe, resulting in his new book, The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence. Here, he tells us what it’s really like in a town thought to be stuck in the technological past and how local tensions are simmering in the modern day. ![]()
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