I suppose Starbucks could have just charged more to upsell personal space. Instead they seem to have banned people bringing any sort of privacy devices into the cafe.
The move targets a small but persistent group of clients known as “cagongjok.” The term blends the Korean words for cafe and study tribe. It refers to people who work or study for hours in coffee shops.
Most use only laptops. But Starbucks says some have been setting up large monitors, printers and even cubicle-style dividers.Source: Twitter
Honestly, if they had just started selling the privacy dividers, or at least renting them for a premium, they would have probably made more money and had happier customers.
The story is perhaps notable because Meta, which was renamed at great expense to chase a bogus metaverse and VR nonsense, has been dumping itself into stupid privacy violating surveillance “glasses”. When you think about it, nobody really wants to be the Harry Caul of today. They want privacy, not total power over anyone who wants privacy.
1974 American mystery thriller film written, produced, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr, and Robert Duvall.
The smart response to papparazzi tech is physical privacy dividers, a logical and superior future. It’s almost like reinvention of the Victorian cafe. Why see or be seen in any public spaces if you want to remain comfortably safe from institutional capture?
On a related note, people walk around and sit in cafes with audio noise cancelling headphones. They can’t hear you and they aren’t talking. Why shouldn’t they try to put up simple vision noise cancelling barriers too? They don’t want to see you, and they don’t want to strap anything to their head.
