Building H #93: Coffee, CosMcs, and Cybertrucks

The original coffee houses were, by design, people places: a space to meet, to talk, to play board games, to listen to stories or music. Appearing first in the Middle East in the 15th century, they were widespread throughout Europe by the 1600s, bustling with political and artistic debate, card games and chess tables, and deal-making (mostly, we should add, just for men). So central were cafes to culture and commerce that both the London Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange were started at cafes in their respective cities.

So what does the future of the coffee shop look like today? In one vision, it’s got lots of sugary drinks, no seating, and not one, not two, not three but four drive-through lanes. Welcome to CosMc’s, the new restaurant concept from McDonald’s, which behind its bright blue and screaming yellow appearance is pretty much the antithesis of what coffeeshops have been for 500 years. Remove the coffee talk and just add sugar. Lots of sugar.

The arrival of CosMc’s is just one recent example of a new, rather worrisome trend on the American landscape, where experiences that were once opportunities for human contact and friendly gathering have been reengineered for maximum convenience and minimum social interaction. And not surprisingly, the fast-food industry in on the vanguard of the trend.

As the New York Times observed last month, drive-throughs have exploded in recent years, with usage growing by 30% since 2019 - while in-store fast food visits have fallen by almost half. Restaurants are slashing the size of dining rooms while maximizing the number of drive-through lanes. Chick-fil-A just opened a new two-story, four-lane drive through that can serve 75 customers an hour - it has the restaurant industry buzzing with excitement. (It’s ironic that In-and-Out - the chain whose very name promises maximum efficiency and minimum waiting - is perhaps the slowest place to actually get a burger these days.)

All this efficiency reminded us, again, of one of our favorite essays on the theme, by admitted introvert David Byrne. In a 2017 essay in MIT Technology Review, Byrne uncorked his “theory that much recent tech development and innovation over the last decade or so has an unspoken overarching agenda. It has been about creating the possibility of a world with less human interaction.”

Byrne thoroughly checks off the examples: Online ordering and home delivery. Ride-hailing apps. Self-driving cars. Automated checkouts. Video games. Virtual reality. Smart speakers. Artificial intelligence. 

“I’m not saying that many of these tools, apps, and other technologies are not hugely convenient, clever, and efficient,” Bryne admits. “I use many of them myself. But in a sense, they run counter to who we are as human beings.”

Between Byrne’s 2017 essay and today, most notably, was the COVID pandemic, when by necessity much human contact was minimized and the trend drastically accelerated. In many circumstances, human-to-human interaction that was seen as ordinary and conventional was rapidly automated and phased out, drastically reducing the sometimes incidental and sometimes meaningful human encounters we enjoyed (or endured) on a day to day basis. Most profoundly, though, was that this automation for health’s sake transformed human interaction into a choice: something that we could consider not only optional but outright negative.

This seems to mark a significant change in the impetus to reduce human contact. Once automation was driven by companies as a way to maximize efficiency and minimize human labor - and ordinary people oftentimes hated it! A 2019 poll found that 86% of consumers preferred to talk with ordinary human being rather than a chatbot or other automated customer service. But today, many consumers actively prefer to use technology over a human - a poll earlier this year found that two-thirds of those surveyed would choose an automated check-out over a human being. (Obviously these aren’t apples-to-apples data, but the suggestion is evident.)

The challenge here is that we are, as Aristotle said, social creatures - we thrive in the company of others. But as we are increasingly isolated, we get used to be alone and find it harder to connect with others. This is the so-called Loneliness Paradox, which is compounded by the larger paradox that as each of us becomes more isolated, we collectively share being lonely in common. (Some people define the Loneliness Paradox more specifically as the rise of loneliness in an increasingly connected digital world, but for our purposes the broader sense seems preferable. Paradoxes abound!)

Maybe we’re in a particularly warped moment when the idea of human contact seems likely to result in  human conflict - an antagonistic, adversarial encounter rather than one with the potential to stimulate new ideas or understanding or commonality. And when that’s the case, of course we just want more drive throughs and fewer conversations. As our friend Adam Rogers wrote recently in Business Insider about the ultimate drive-through vehicle - Tesla’s ridiculous Cybertruck: “The people hawking the trucks have to make us believe that the world is, in fact, getting increasingly hostile. Make sure everyone can buy a gun, then sell everyone a bulletproof car.”

Adam is onto something here: isolation is part of the sales pitch, it’s the promise that you won’t be bothered or threatened or disturbed or inconvenienced by strangers. Staying in your car - and making that car a living room on wheels, or even better, a fortress on wheels - is the safe and convenient thing to do.

But it’s all a con. It may be easier to be alone, but it’s not better, not really. We’ll close with Adam’s words, since he nails it:

Besides, the perfect postapocalyptic vehicle isn't a big ugly truck. It's a bicycle — light, reliable, easy to fix and scavenge parts for, able to move cargo, doesn't need any power except you and calories. And the thing that will actually get us through an apocalypse — or, preferably, prevent one — isn't driving a steel-plated War Rig. It's working together. Cooperation has always been humanity's superpower, when we remember to use it. The real armor dome is the friends we make along The Road.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to go have coffee with a friend.

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