Residents of the metropolitan region were instructed this week to abandon their phones entirely and search for information in person, after a regional oversight board concluded that no digital setting could reliably stop automatically generated summaries from appearing above search results.
The board, which convened in a converted municipal hall, issued a binding order requiring citizens to walk to one of forty-one public reading rooms before typing any question. Officials said the rooms were stocked with printed encyclopedias, paper maps and a single telephone line reserved for emergencies. Inspectors have been posted at each door to confirm that visitors are not carrying devices with active assistants.
"We looked for a switch, and there is no switch," said the board's chairwoman, Ilse Varga, at a press briefing held without microphones so that no assistant could be activated. "Our citizens deserve to read the websites they actually came for. If that requires them to walk, they will walk."
Local transit authorities have already added three night buses to serve the reading rooms, and a queue of several hundred people formed outside the central branch on Monday morning, each holding a handwritten question on index cards. Clerks reported that answers now take an average of two days to locate, a delay the board described as a welcome return to patience.
The order takes effect next Friday. Anyone found searching on a phone within city limits will be required to recite the question aloud to a reading-room attendant, who will decide whether the answer is worth the walk.