Smart Things

Chapter 19 From Invisible Computing to Everyware

One of the ironies in the writing of this book is that I had to escape pervasive digital technology to write it. I wrote and edited most of it in Four Barrel Coffee (Figure 19-1), a San Francisco café that flaunts its anti-digital experience: it provides no networking, no electrical outlets, and its seating consists of narrow shared benches that force most patrons to interact with each other face to face. A giant antique coffee roaster dominates the back half of the space, surrounded by stacks of burlap coffee bags. The sound system is a vintage turntable and carefully selected vinyl records from the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, recorded and pressed in the era before CDs. Though lots of people ...