n.
At a coffee shop or similar establishment that offers free wireless Internet, a person who is oblivious to everyone and everything except the screen in front of them.
Example Citations:
No, protests Jon Myerow, who owns a couple of craft-beer-and-cheese-centric Tria cafes in Center City, he's not a Luddite. He's as addicted to his BlackBerry as the next guy. But there's a time and a place: "When you're out with friends, we should be with friends."...But that's not quite how it often goes down these days — laptop zombies lurking in Starbucks, dates dumped (for 10 full minutes at a time) to answer texts, silent ESPN crawls above the bar, as distracting as snakes on a plane.
—Rick Nichols, " Unplugging a wine bar to let the conversation pour forth: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_nichols/20100826_Rick_Nichols__Unplugging_a_wine_bar_to_let_the_conversation_pour_forth.html," The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 26, 2010
Walk into any coffeehouse or tea bar in America, and you will most likely hear a lot of ... silence. Maybe the light clicking of keys on a keyboard. Some soft music being provided by the establishment. Occasionally, a pair of people seated at the same table talking in hushed tones. But very little in the way of conversation, discussion or exchange of ideas. It sounds and feels a lot like a library...The dude sitting next to you in his comfy Starbucks chair might as well be a thousand miles away—his mind probably is...We have become a Nation Of Laptop Zombies.
—Tom Wright, " Are We Becoming A Nation Of Laptop Zombies?: http://open.salon.com/blog/tomjwright/2010/02/17/are_we_becoming_a_nation_of_laptop_zombies," Open Salon, February 17, 2010
Earliest Citation:
By design, Starbucks, Borders, Barriques and a couple of dozen independent coffeehouses around Madison have become virtual offices. In some coffee shops a table without a laptop is the exception. "We call them laptop zombies," said Matt Weygandt, a partner in the five Barriques locations in and around Madison.
—Samara Kalk Derby, "Virtual offices," The Capital Times & Wisconsin State Journal, May 23, 2007
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New words. 2013.