Escape the digital cocoon

Escape the digital cocoon

The only way to reduce polarization is to talk with people in real life. Here’s one way to do just that and find a seat at a coffee bar.

By Brad Berens

A while back, I was thinking about how our behavior would change as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) became common. (This still hasn’t happened.)

My recurring fantasy: once we were all looking at life through special lenses with information overlays, it would be easier to find a place to sit at a coffee bar.

This was just one of my AR fantasies. I also thought that conferences would be easier if my smartglasses displayed arrows connecting names to faces. “Gretchen Smith,” the name hovering over a woman’s head would read. If I stared at the name or blinked, then more information would unfurl reminding me about my last email exchange with Gretchen, how we first met, etc.

This would spare me either, a) the mild panicked expression that crosses my face when somebody at a conference knows me but I have no clue who they are, or b) when a woman has a lanyard with her name and company conveniently legible but inconveniently at precise nipple longitude—so when trying to determine her name I also wind up looking at her chest, which is not a great way to start a chat, and which can result in another mild panicked expression.

Back to the coffee bar fantasy, Peet’s by preference, after collecting my oat milk, vanilla latte with an extra shot—yes, I’m one of those people—I’d gaze through my AR glasses and see where a person sitting alone at a table built for two or three or four was open to my joining them. An invisible sign would hover over the table: “Feel Free to Sit Here” with other information like, “I’m working” or “I’m happy chat, just not about politics.”

This magical sign would let me bypass the awkward, “hey, do you mind if I sit here?” that might provoke a horrified look that would spoil my latte.

By now, you might be thinking two things:

1. I worry too much in coffee shops;
2. Why do I need AR to solve this problem?

I can’t do too much about #1 (besides therapy), but for #2 the answer is no. Using AR for this is digital advanced technology looking for a problem to solve where a piece of paper works just as well.

My solution for finding a place to sit at a coffee bar

(which has other benefits) is this sign:

My mood will determine how I fill out the sign. For example, if I’m feeling chatty but don’t want to talk politics:

If enough people think that this sort of sign is a good idea, and if enough people print and fill them out, then finding a seat in a busy Peet’s or Starbucks will get easier.

Want to give this a try? You can print out a blank version of the sign here; it’s easy-to-fold and prop on your table.**

What are the other benefits?
We spend so much time cocooned in our digital worlds where we either interact with people we already know or get in fights with people we don’t know but who social media algorithms decide will rile us up and keep us on the platform so that the social media company can sell more ads.

We are losing the middle ground where we can chat with nearby people we don’t know.

I blame Tinder
Why? Because Tinder (and Bumble, Happn, Grindr and other apps) removed the great source of friction and terror from finding somebody of the desired gender: they took out the awkward, “um, hey” where you had no idea if the other person would smile, laugh at you, or react in an unnerving way that suggested psychosis.

For those of you who don’t know, Tinder pops an endless series of pictures of people you might want to… date… onto your smart phone. If you swipe right, you’re open to talking with that person. If you swipe left, you aren’t. Tinder doesn’t tell you who has rejected you, so you only match with people when both of you have swiped right. Tinder users already know that the other person is willing to talk. That’s cheating!

(La Profesora and I have been married since before the world wide web, smartphones, social media, and online dating, so my outrage about this is entirely on behalf of my younger self.)

Of course, it’s not just Tinder. The internet has taken friction out of interactions with our fellow humans in many ways, which has trapped us in our digital cocoons.

We can break out of our digital cocoons through analog means, talking with people we don’t know, with whom we might not agree about a lot of things, but with whom we might find common ground about other things.

A coffee bar is one place to start.
__________

 

Brad Berens is the Center’s strategic advisor and a senior research fellow. He is principal at Big Digital Idea Consulting. You can learn more about Brad at www.bradberens.com, follow him on Blue Sky and/or LinkedIn, and subscribe to his weekly newsletter (only some of his columns are syndicated here).

 

* Image Prompt: “Please create a photorealistic image of a clothed man emerging vertically out of a translucent cocoon. We are looking at the image from the man’s left side, so his nose is pointing right. We can see that one of the man’s hands has broken through the top of the cocoon, and the top of his head has emerged. The cocoon sits in an otherwise empty gray space. The bottom two thirds of the cocoon are textured like a butterfly’s chrysalis. The top third is more translucent so that we see the shape of the man’s body.”

** Years ago, my friend David Daniel had a similar idea, which was a sign that passengers on plane could put on the back of the seat in front of them that said either, “Please wake me for food” or “Please don’t wake me for food.” That idea was part of my inspiration for this piece.

 

See all columns from the Center.

August 14, 2025