Martin Buber thought. Protocolization turns interactions into I/It, even more so than the usual transational social interaction. It's a step beyond I/It, like I/[procedural cloud]. Economically efficient but also alienating; they remind us of our unimportance and lack of specialness.
Religious rituals are protocols (sort of) that push in the opposite direction; they aim to restore the soul, to remind us of our connectedness, to assert that we matter. Every time I participate in one I wonder why, since I don't believe in any of this shit, but it's probably something like this.
The Starbucks practice of adding little cheery personalized drawings on your order seems like an attempt to add an element of human individuality to a vast inhuman machine. It's so lame and obvious and yet it kind of works. It's better than nothing! It feels like capitalist acceleration making a minor concession to actual human feeling. As a human, I appreciate the gesture.