People are really leaning into doing work video calls in otherwise-quiet cafes hey.
At this point cafes have given in.
Even without calls, sitting next to someone who is at their laptop and in the zone is a whole thing. Like standing at a train platform when the non-stopper charges by a metre away, there is just something about the sheering force proximity of the energy.
So that started a while back. People gently at their laptops, fine. People typing like a donkey falling downstairs, it’s like they’re lit in a different colour. They’re in the room but not of the room. It’s impossible to pick at a pastry sitting next to that kind of intensity.
There’s a cafe with a small upstairs near St Pancras and I was once in there waiting for a friend, and four other people were in this same small space taking video calls, one without headphones even, just yelling at his screen.
I used to work out of the members room at Tate Modern and I remember somebody there who would bring a laptop stand, external keyboard, and headphones with head mic.
There has been a whole arc to this:
I think maybe during covid a lot of people fully adopted working from home, and what that means is working from cafes nearby to home, because London flats are expensive and tiny. I can’t blame them.
So that was when laptops starting being banned, in reaction.
There’s a place in my neighbourhood that began by intermittently banning laptops at lunch at the main tables. Then all the time.
They are a cafe slash amazing vegan fusion spot slash yoga studio so I guess they are sensitive to the vibe.
Then laptops were only allowed at specific 4 or 5 stools by the window. You felt distinctly unwelcome (but went anyway, it’s nice to be out of the house).
Then, I was in a couple weeks back, they’ve surrendered.
The window stool area is now dense nest of stools and counters and a new wedged-in shared table in the middle. You can probably jam 10 people in there now, shoulder to shoulder and back to back.
This area is made for laptops, and people sit there all day yelling video calls on their head-mics, battery farmed knowledge work.
It makes zero sense to have a laptop area like this: it’s like the old days of smoking sections in restaurants where you’d have the smoking section and the non-smoking section, divided by a homeopathic string barrier that would somehow by keep the smoke smell from transmitting across by magical signage.
And yet here we are.
Second hand smoke / second hand zoom.
I don’t have an Apple Vision Pro (I’ve done the Apple Store demo and have Opinions) but I am so tempted to acquire one entirely for the purpose of sitting in cafes wearing it for hours, yelling on zoom.
I said before that iPhones should have a sense of shame: Other people nearby should get a special tut-tut button they can tap.
BUT let me instead try to be more positive.
Would it be possible instead to have silent video calls?
On Bluesky when I talked about this, Sam Jeffers said
your AI-powered lip-reading startup just got wings.
Which is exactly it!
See, a Vision Pro doesn’t have a webcam on an orbiting mini-drone and of course you’ve got a great big headset on. So when you use Zoom, everyone else instead sees your “persona”, an authentic spatial representation of you that enables others on a call to see your facial expressions and movements
– a real-time reconstructed talking 3D scan of your head and heads.
So, with just a regular laptop:
Firstly I should be able to speak without speaking, you know, just mouth the words.
Surely my words can be figured out by fusing data from (a) the Mac webcam reading my lips, and (b) an EEG sensor in some future upgraded AirPods. EEG is usually used to measure brain activity… (admittedly dry sensor EEG was not great last time I tried it) but EEG also reads the much clearer muscle signals. And Apple has patented EEG sensors in AirPods. Maybe that patent was never about reading brainwaves.
Now we’ve got capture: EEG-enhanced lip reading.
As for playback, what does the person on the other end of the call hears? They hear you. Since iOS 17, Apple has enabled Personal Voice (previously tested as an accessibility feature called Voice Banking): you can create a synthesised voice that sounds like your own to communicate with family and friends. Use your Personal Voice to type to speak in FaceTime and phone calls.
Put the two together and… ta-da. Mic-less, silent video calls, all on-device, seamless to whichever platform you’re using.
i.e. we can’t solve the wild out-of-context energy of workers sitting in cafes on video calls, but we could at least silence the yelling.
Being grouchy at other people is the mother of invention and all that. pls mr apple make it so.
People are really leaning into doing work video calls in otherwise-quiet cafes hey.
At this point cafes have given in.
Even without calls, sitting next to someone who is at their laptop and in the zone is a whole thing. Like standing at a train platform when the non-stopper charges by a metre away, there is just something about the sheering force proximity of the energy.
So that started a while back. People gently at their laptops, fine. People typing like a donkey falling downstairs, it’s like they’re lit in a different colour. They’re in the room but not of the room. It’s impossible to pick at a pastry sitting next to that kind of intensity.
There’s a cafe with a small upstairs near St Pancras and I was once in there waiting for a friend, and four other people were in this same small space taking video calls, one without headphones even, just yelling at his screen.
I used to work out of the members room at Tate Modern and I remember somebody there who would bring a laptop stand, external keyboard, and headphones with head mic.
There has been a whole arc to this:
I think maybe during covid a lot of people fully adopted working from home, and what that means is working from cafes nearby to home, because London flats are expensive and tiny. I can’t blame them.
So that was when laptops starting being banned, in reaction.
There’s a place in my neighbourhood that began by intermittently banning laptops at lunch at the main tables. Then all the time.
They are a cafe slash amazing vegan fusion spot slash yoga studio so I guess they are sensitive to the vibe.
Then laptops were only allowed at specific 4 or 5 stools by the window. You felt distinctly unwelcome (but went anyway, it’s nice to be out of the house).
Then, I was in a couple weeks back, they’ve surrendered.
The window stool area is now dense nest of stools and counters and a new wedged-in shared table in the middle. You can probably jam 10 people in there now, shoulder to shoulder and back to back.
This area is made for laptops, and people sit there all day yelling video calls on their head-mics, battery farmed knowledge work.
It makes zero sense to have a laptop area like this: it’s like the old days of smoking sections in restaurants where you’d have the smoking section and the non-smoking section, divided by a homeopathic string barrier that would somehow by keep the smoke smell from transmitting across by magical signage.
And yet here we are.
Second hand smoke / second hand zoom.
I don’t have an Apple Vision Pro (I’ve done the Apple Store demo and have Opinions) but I am so tempted to acquire one entirely for the purpose of sitting in cafes wearing it for hours, yelling on zoom.
I said before that iPhones should have a sense of shame:
BUT let me instead try to be more positive.
Would it be possible instead to have silent video calls?
On Bluesky when I talked about this, Sam Jeffers said
Which is exactly it!
See, a Vision Pro doesn’t have a webcam on an orbiting mini-drone and of course you’ve got a great big headset on. So when you use Zoom, everyone else instead sees your “persona”, – a real-time reconstructed talking 3D scan of your head and heads.
So, with just a regular laptop:
Firstly I should be able to speak without speaking, you know, just mouth the words.
Surely my words can be figured out by fusing data from (a) the Mac webcam reading my lips, and (b) an EEG sensor in some future upgraded AirPods. EEG is usually used to measure brain activity… (admittedly dry sensor EEG was not great last time I tried it) but EEG also reads the much clearer muscle signals. And Apple has patented EEG sensors in AirPods. Maybe that patent was never about reading brainwaves.
Now we’ve got capture: EEG-enhanced lip reading.
As for playback, what does the person on the other end of the call hears? They hear you. Since iOS 17, Apple has enabled Personal Voice (previously tested as an accessibility feature called Voice Banking):
Put the two together and… ta-da. Mic-less, silent video calls, all on-device, seamless to whichever platform you’re using.
i.e. we can’t solve the wild out-of-context energy of workers sitting in cafes on video calls, but we could at least silence the yelling.
Being grouchy at other people is the mother of invention and all that. pls mr apple make it so.