Sublime

This is a cruel confluence of time and space: just as we lose noncommercial spaces, we also see all of our own time and our actions as potentially commercial.

Coffee shops provided a perfect test case for my theory of digital geography. They were spaces of consumption, in which members of a certain demographic, who were also very active on the Internet, expressed their personal aspirations by spending money. The café space integrated aesthetic decisions across architecture, interior design, and tableware

Over the past decade, Instagram became “the lens in which we view the global specialty café world,” Trevor Walsh, the marketing manager of Pilot Coffee Roasters, a chain of minimalist cafés in Toronto, told me. “We want to have design choices that play into nice photos, an environment that would be a shareable moment.” Posting photos to Pilot’s Ins