We respectfully have to vehemently disagree I'm afraid.
I feel that some of your analogies are somewhat odious and don't really make sense in the grand scheme of things - to me - but we can agree to disagree.
I also feel you put too much stock in what others think about you and what you might be doing rather than putting stock in what may help you to harmlessly achieve a goal regardless of these alluded to "social norms". - Please correct me if I'm wrong here.
Your envisioned "Social norms" also appear to demonstrate a potential reason for the complete lack of innovation in screen real estate in the laptop industry for the last decade.
With the exception of Asus no other mainstream laptop OEM/ODM has really pushed the envelope when it comes to additional screens when demand has clearly been out there for at least the last 10 years.
8 core/16 Thread laptops with 64GB RAM and Multi TB NVMe have only become available in the mainstream in the last 3 years. There are many, myself included who required this in portable form for many years previous to that. (My use case was GNS3 and EVE-NG labs when I'm out and about and internet was patchy)
I reached out to G Screen in 2010 with funds ready to purchase their dual screen laptop prototype and unfortunately wasn't able to.
I made my first quite basic prototype a little while afterwards.
When Project Valerie was announced I thought at last I can now buy the dream - alas it wasn't available - so I just doubled down on my prototypes.
I have personally and professionally had a need for more portable screen real estate since at least 2005.
Also you are definitely mistaken - No one cares what the engineers toolbox looks like as long as the engineer GETS THE JOB DONE in a timely effective manor. Those are literally the only metrics that matter.
Some people are more effective with a 1 screen laptop. Some prefer n screens. Bottom line is I am more effective and can react to anomalies faster if I can view multiple infrastructure monitoring tools without the constant tedious minimising and maximising especially when at customer sites or at the data center.
Some people don't mind balancing a laptop in one hand while tapping on the keyboard when resolving issues in a comms cabinet - I prefer using my TeenySERV Duo.
My "tools" are also personally fine tuned to my other particular use cases. (Granted my professional workload is a little extreme)
Note that we also have other prototypes with less screens for individuals with different use cases.
Imagine my surprise using my prototypes and being told by multiple people that they want it "yesterday" for their professional and personal use cases.
Our company inbox is literally overflowing with people trying to acquire the 7 Screen prototype in stark contrast with your world view.
The demand and diversity of these individuals, digital nomads, CEOs/Executives, lay people, finance specialists, content creators, developers, film studios did initially surprise me but it does make clear that they aren't concerned with your envisaged "social implications"
With the greatest of respect I think that your envisioned "social norms" don't quite resonate with the general direction or actual norms for laptops in 2020 or going forward in this particular instance.
I predict the trend will steer towards Multi screen laptops, laptops with rollable/foldable displays and finally augmented reality headsets capable of projecting very high resolution content directly into the viewers eyes simulating a multi monitor setup. (Some of these are already available and being actively developed in 2020 already...)