Laptops are a fantastic way for more introverted people to meet each other. Why do you think it's all the rage to paper your Macbook like a NASCAR driver's jacket? Sure, part of it is just the pure hustle of startups, and the low cost of logo stickers as marketing.
To a potential startup founders a few years out of college, the coffee shop full of laptops is going to feel just like the library during study week. (Maybe someone a lot younger than I am would say the college libraries just feel like coffee shops these days. Get off my lawn.)
Have you ever sipped a latte with your headphones on and caught someone's eye as they concentrated as intensely as you're trying to? Then did you notice the GitHub sticker and smile to yourself? Then did you notice the <STARTUP NAME HERE> sticker and know you would really have something to say to them? (Assuming you work up the courage, dang, they're gorgeous.)
If you don't want to spend time alone with strangers in quiet reflection, get your frappucino to go, and find a different social club, eh?
I have no problem with laptop cafes, I bring mine to cafes to work all the time. I really enjoy it. But I also see merit in cafes that establish a no cell, no laptop rule (sometimes just for certain hours of the day). That would be a draw for me (honestly, the no cell phone policy tends to be more of a draw than a no laptop policy).
To me, this is very much a one size doesn't fit all situation. It makes no sense to get into a huff when people are on their laptops in a cafe that permits this. That said, remarkably, some people get strangely enraged when one cafe or bar out of twenty (or hundred) establishes a no cell phone policy. Like, they aren't satisfied that they can have their way in 95% of coffee shops and bars, it has to be this specific one, right now (these folks, interestingly, often think the matter can be cleared up by simply reminding everyone which country we live in).
My family left the east coast when I was 9, so I don't really have any experience of commuter trains, but I think of this as the moral equivalent of people who won't shut up on the Quiet Car.[0]
Public and semi-public space is important to social interactions, but the extroverts tend to get all the say in how that space is designed. Because they're the ones that speak up, well, by definition.
I've dreamed many times about starting a cafe with a no-cell no-laptop policy, but just assumed I was a cranky bastard and the idea was insane. Your post suggests that maybe it's a thing, though - would you mind saying where you've found such cafes?
Wish I could, this is just something I read or hear about on the news, radio, and so forth every now and then, usually because someone got angry when they couldn't use their cell and was asked to leave and got angry about it and it becomes a "local interest kind of news story.
Bourbon and branch in SF bans cell phones, but that's a bar, not a cafe. I read about another one (a cafe) that bans cell phones and laptops for a certain section of the day, but I'd have to google around for it.
there are plenty of them here in NY. or, they'll ban before/after the busy period. you can't just buy a $3 cup and sit all day at a table that's costing the operator $10/day to lease. It's also really obnoxious, it makes a place seem boring when people are sitting around anti-socially with their laptops pretending to be studying.
It's a pretty unique American thing -- you can't just sit quietly, you have to always seem busy -- kind of like eating lunch alone.
To a potential startup founders a few years out of college, the coffee shop full of laptops is going to feel just like the library during study week. (Maybe someone a lot younger than I am would say the college libraries just feel like coffee shops these days. Get off my lawn.)
Have you ever sipped a latte with your headphones on and caught someone's eye as they concentrated as intensely as you're trying to? Then did you notice the GitHub sticker and smile to yourself? Then did you notice the <STARTUP NAME HERE> sticker and know you would really have something to say to them? (Assuming you work up the courage, dang, they're gorgeous.)
If you don't want to spend time alone with strangers in quiet reflection, get your frappucino to go, and find a different social club, eh?
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