Just to give an unrelated update to my earlier Places of Technology-Enhanced Social Encounters article, these are among the things I’ve seen people doing at same café:

• Cutting out and glueing together an art portfolio from exhibition photographs (amazing art btw)
• Writing a grant proposal in the field of experimental modern dance choreography (topic: attention and chrystal meth)
• Screening and cutting digital video with a digicam and a PowerBook
• Writing a diploma thesis on music software in an artificial intelligence context
• Job interviews (several)
• Magazine interviews (at least once)
• Cutting a finished piece of electronic music (”Das wird wahrscheinlich ne Maxi”).
• …

And, of course, lots of people working on websites and doing other work-related stuff they’ve been doing at cafés for centuries. Like, say, homework.

(Another thing I noticed: There’s a 50% laptop ratio among visitors at most times, but that doesn’t mean that people stop chatting with strangers. Maybe even to the contrary.)