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Green Bank, in Pocahontas County in West Virginia, USA, is one of the quiet residential place on earth. Here there is absolutely no cell phone signal, no Wi-Fi signal, even here there is no radio and television waves that can be captured.

But Green Bank instead of lagging behind in technology. Instead, this area is home to one of the world’s largest radio telescope named Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT), operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. GBT is the reason why this town electromagnetic silence from the crowd.

Radio telescope works by detecting the electromagnetic waves coming from distant galaxies. This signal is so faint that small emission of radio waves from electronic gadgets may interfere with the reading of the radio telescope. For this reason, all mobile phones, Wi-Fi, radio and other communication devices are prohibited here. There is no cell phone towers around this area, there is no music played on the radio or on television soap operas. Even gasoline-fueled cars are not allowed because gasoline engines use a spark to burn a mixture of fuel and air, and electrical sparks generate electromagnetic waves.

Published by Updetails.  See more at: http://www.updetails.com/2016/01/green-bank-city-of-no-signal-mobile-wi.html

A group of scientists at Carnegie Mellon believe that by the year 2050, robots designed to play soccer will surpass their professional human counterparts. This juicy nugget of techno-speculation materializes in the middle of Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, a new documentary broadly about the internet from Werner Herzog. Sporty robot prototypes, which look like Roombas with attitude, have already been created by an emotional team of students who have developed love for one robot the way sports fans adore Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. But they disappear just as swiftly as they entered in the dizzying collage of subjects Herzog has stuffed into the 98-minute film.

Divided into 10 parts, each introduced with a Herzogian title like “The Internet of Me,” the doc spends all-too-brief time with the people who create, protect, advance, and fear the internet — and in one stark case, those who have found a way to escape it.

Published by The Verge.  See more at: http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/25/10823946/werner-herzog-documentary-sundance-2016-lo-and-behold

In West Virginia, just 200 miles away from Washington, DC, you’ll find a community of roughly 8,000 people who live completely off the grid.

In the 13,000-square-mile “National Radio Quiet Zone,” all cell phone, Wi-Fi, microwaves, and even some vacuum use are all banned by law.

The restrictions were put in place because of the 11 large-scale telescopes installed in the area by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the 1950s. The observatory houses the world’s largest fully steerable telescope, which has a staggering surface area of 2.3 acres.

Nothing, not even a Hoover vacuum or commercial cell phone tower, is allowed to interfere with the telescope’s readings. While some Pocahontas County residents are long-time locals, others are self-proclaimed “technological lepers” who moved there to adopt a device-free lifestyle.

Photographer Emile Holba was extremely fascinated by the off-the-grid lives led in the National Radio Quiet Zone, so he began documenting the people and landscapes of Pocahontas County. We spoke with Holba about the characters he met, as well as what it was like to briefly live without an iPhone, GPS, or email.

Published by Business Insider.  See more at: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-life-is-like-off-the-grid-2016-1