The emergence of coffee drinking and the growth of mobile computing (i.e. the use of laptops, NetBooks, smartphones, Kindles, iPads, et.al.) seem to be quite obviously symbiotic. The fact that this new kinship is so self evidently obvious may be why there is so little written about it online. There are plenty of references and implied nods to this combination, but there is little (I couldn’t find anything online!) to see which directly considers this aspect of our culture.
There are quite a few sites which sell caffeine molecular diagrams as stickers for your laptop…could you find comparable stickers for other chemicals…? A major part of this new symbiosis is the growth of the modern coffee shop. A place where you can get pretty good (‘high test’) coffee, along with WiFi could be characterized as the perfect storm.
I don’t think I need to propose that you go to your local coffee shop to gauge how many computer users there are…you already know this. It seems that the 1970’s gave us ‘fern bars’ where trading information about horoscopes was the very cutting edge of the avant garde. Now we have coffee houses filled with computer monks huddled over telecommuting tasks, Facebook comments, and those who want to show off their latest eReader.
The idea of a café where you could just hang out and get a good cup of coffee is one which has a long history in Europe. I always wonder what the average habitué of one of these cafés may think of this latest fad. In New York there is a growing trend of cutting WiFi and functionally outlawing laptops at coffee shops. The intent is to get away from the solitary, impersonal laptop users and to return to some sort of raucous bustling café scene where boulevardiers reign supreme…
Good luck.
My best guess is that this combination of doing tasks which rely on alertness coupled with chemicals which advance this ability are too well dovetailed to just get rid of them. The growing cases of telecommuting in our culture might slowly turn us from a culture of workers in cubicles to workers sipping mocha java wearing headsets…anywhere.
No More Perks: Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptop Users
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124950421033208823.html
Beginning of a Trend? Coffee Shops Restricting Laptop Use
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2009/08/06/beginning-of-a-trend-coffee-shops-restricting-laptop-use
Poll: Should Coffee Shops Ban Laptops?
http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2010/08/should-coffee-shops-ban-laptops-poll.html
