[SIGCIS-Members] Help on Coffee and Computing

Tue Jul 21 07:01:54 PDT 2020

Jim,
Coffee was always, at least since it turned into a conference proper,
essential at TED. I dare mention this conference since "the people that
built the Internet" used to be there. At the last Monterey TED, or possibly
the first Long Beach one, The Barista Guild got a couple of stands with
excellent proto-hipster espresso. Guild members were not only ace coffee
makers but also followed all the talks on monitors, so you could discuss
coffee AND less serious stuff with them. With an 18-hour daily programme,
their coffee sure helped.

Making espresso is also a near-perfect percolation process, so it would
appeal to all of us that simulate forest fires, epidemics, etc., also at
the surface/syntactic level. It all just makes sense, really.
M.

On Tue, 21 Jul 2020 at 00:15, Michael Halvorson <halvormj at plu.edu> wrote:

> Kevin and James,
>
> At Microsoft/Redmond in the late 80s and early 90s, there was a lot of
> lore around the distribution of "free" sodas in refrigerators in most of
> the break rooms. This was before bottled water became a thing, for the most
> part. On tours for new employees and guests, there was a lot of admiration
> for the relatively narrow selection of Code, Diet Code, Milk, and Chocolate
> Milk, which people could freely consume if they wished. Coffee was less
> popular, but people did venture off "campus" for burgers, ribs, etc.
>
> The most popular stimulant beverage by far at Microsoft was Mountain Dew,
> among developers and the documentation teams. In other circles, Jolt Cola
> was popular, and mentioned in publications like *The Cyberpunk Handbook*
> (Random House, 1995), edited by R. U. Sirius [Ken Goffman], St. Jude [Jude
> Milhon], and Bart Nagel. See p. 66.
>
> --Michael
>
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 2:52 PM Kevin Driscoll <kdriscoll at alum.mit.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello Jim and SIGCIS,
>>
>> Two references come to mind:
>>
>> 1. The "Trojan Room coffee pot" at the U of Cambridge is often cited as
>> the first live camera on the web:
>> - Quentin Stafford-Fraser, “On Site: The Life and Times of the First Web
>> Cam,” Communications of the ACM 44, no. 7 (July 1, 2001): 25–26.
>> https://doi.org/10.1145/379300.379327.
>> - Full text of above without paywall:
>> https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/qsf/cacm200107.html
>> - Captured by the Wayback Machine on 10 December 1997:
>> http://web.archive.org/web/19971210230542/http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html
>>
>> 2. Roy Levin of Microsoft Research published a paper about running an
>> industry lab in which he recommends that managers "INSTALL A WORLD-CLASS
>> COFFEE MACHINE" and notes that "the first capital purchase" at MSR-Silicon
>> Valley was an espresso machine.
>> - Roy Levin, “A Perspective on Computing Research Management,” ACM SIGOPS
>> Operating Systems Review 41, no. 2 (April 1, 2007): 3–9,
>> https://doi.org/10.1145/1243418.1243420.
>>
>> I've heard other lore about coffee culture at Microsoft that involves the
>> proximity of Starbucks in the 1990s. Allegedly, management lobbied for
>> coffee carts in every building to keep programmers from driving to
>> off-campus coffeehouses. No cite for that one but it would be fun to track
>> down the origin of the story.
>>
>> Looking forward to a caffeinated special issue of the Annals on the
>> transnational history of stimulants and computing.
>>
>> Best of luck,
>>
>> Kevin Driscoll
>> U of Virginia
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 3:41 PM James Cortada <jcortada at umn.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> The IT community of users, programmers, vendors, etc have for decades
>>> had a reputation for being extensive consumers of coffee. In some parts of
>>> the IT ecosystem, especially among those who work odd hours, such as
>>> programmers, computer operators, and vendor field engineers.  I am studying
>>> the corporate ephemera of this industry and its cultural attachments, such
>>> as coffee cups and what they tell us about computing.  Do any of you have
>>> any information, ephemera, or sources and citations on this specific issue
>>> of coffee and computing?  I can get many industry folks, such as IBM
>>> retirees, to wax eloquently on the subject in their private FB accounts,
>>> but that is not enough.  Corporate culture is tough to study.  Thanks in
>>> advance for your help.  Jim
>>> --
>>> James W. Cortada
>>> Senior Research Fellow
>>> Charles Babbage Institute
>>> University of Minnesota
>>> jcortada at umn.edu
>>> 608-274-6382
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>
>
>
> --
> Michael J. Halvorson
> Benson Family Chair in Business and Economic History
>
>
> Author of: *Code Nation: Personal Computing and the Learn to Program
> Movement in America (2020) <http://www.thiscodenation.com>*
>
>
>
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