Weariness over push notifications, Slack messages, news alerts and travel deals pinging your phone at all hours is an indicator, as is the "delete Facebook" mini-uprising, that a tech backlash is under way. Have privacy transgressions and personalization, in particular, gone too far before airlines and hotels have even nailed it?

For an antidote and a reprieve, our On Experience columnist, Colin Nagy, turned to a Tokyo bookstore that has partnered with residential developers to create communal spaces where people can actually relate to one another as an alternative to being immersed — and lost — in what he described as their "social trances." Beyond the rare books and vinyl on display, there might be a lot to learn there about our complicated lives and times.