Coffee: Disrupting Social Order Since 1511

Yesterday Calestous Juma spoke to the OLPC class about “social responses to radical technologies”.

He’s a very interesting and engaging speaker who has been thinking a lot about the integration of radical technologies. These can be really big things, like genetically modified food, nuclear power, or the laptop itself. What was most exciting to me was the topic Calestous chose for the bulk of his lecture. It was a case study on a truly radical technology: Coffee.

Coffee is not really what springs to mind when we think about ‘technology.’ When we talk about technology we talk about computers, gadgets, and gizmos. We forget that technology is a definition that’s hard to pin down, broadly relating to our use and knowledge of tools and craft. Even if coffee is just a bean, there is a lot of technology in the preparation, consumption, and distribution of the drink that gets us started everyday.

Coffee is somewhat unique in regards to preparation. It has to be served hot, and to get a fresh cup of coffee (before the age of modern packaging) it has to be fresh roasted and brewed. This necessitates serving coffee from a central location. During its rapid spread throughout the Arabian peninsula the rise of the coffee house led to increased gathering and discussion - discussion which was threatening to the established social order. Critics in goverment attempted to ban coffee several times, and coffee gained the reputation as a drink that makes you think. Not because of the effects of caffeine, but because the centralized distribution created this discussion which leads to communication and thought.

Calestous points out that radical technologies often go through a period of demonization and association - one that relies little on real scientific evidence. In the Muslim world coffee was quickly associated with alcohol with claims that it dims the mind. This association helped spread fear and concern about coffee. In the Christian world coffee was attacked simply due to its Arab origins and due to the fear that it would harm the wine and beer industries.

Coffee’s debut in Europe was greeted with opposition, mostly inspired by interest to protect wine, beer, ales and other beverages. Italian wine merchants were alarmed by the spread of coffee, a drink that had early been confined to university premises, especially Padua. Efforts by Italian bishops and priests to argue that coffee consumption violated religious law continued to be ignored. An appeal to the pontiff became the final avenue to excommunicating coffee. But upon sipping it, Pope Clement VIII reportedly declared: “Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious … it would be a pity to have the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall fool Satan by baptizing it and making it a truly Christian beverage.” (from guardian unlimited)

Quickly pointed out by Calestous is that very few of these arguments invoke any real scientific evidence, instead demonizing the product through association and simple fear mongering to support social or commercial incumbents. One example of a truly unscientific experiment was offered. A man condemned to death would be given coffee everyday. For a ‘control’ another (free) man would be given tea. The King proclaimed that they would see which man died first and declare the associated beverage unsafe. The irony here is that the social order broke down - freeing the coffee drinker, who lived much longer than his tea sipping counterpart.

This does not suggest that every new technology is good, or successful (the debate on coffee still goes on, to some extent) but it is important to acknowledge this tension between the radical and incumbent technologies. Coffee’s rise in Britain was complicated by the large national and economic interest in Tea, particularly with the large effort Britain had gone through with India. British women’s groups claimed that coffee led to (among other things) impotence. What was really going on in this dialogue was a social issue. Tea is a home beverage, a product of a household. Men drinking coffee were doing so in coffee houses. This absence, coupled with the already existing problem of men spending time away at taverns and pubs, creates a social pressure between an incumbent technology that serves a social hierarchy goal (tea) and one which does not (coffee).

Presenting this talk to a class that is used to hearing about ’serious technology’ issues was something of a bold move. Still, this example was more illustrative than any of the others. By removing the modern connotations of technology from the discussion it becomes more about the social and economic affects of the introduction and less about the benefits of the tool themselves. One of the wonderful points Calestous made was that radical technologies aren’t necessarily better than existing ones. The tractor was significantly less reliable than the horse on its introduction. The difference was that the tractor had significantly more potential for improvement than the horse. When thinking about technology we have to acknowledge that part of the success is in the selling, and understanding the reasons for the success is a combination of seeing this potential and battling the incumbent.

And the reason we take milk in our Coffee? Calestous points out that this was simply a compromise between dairy farmers and the coffee industry. Worried that consumption of coffee would destroy milk sales, they encouraged propaganda that promoted the consumption of coffee with milk. The result is the cafe au lait we enjoy today.