PGIVORD

Hello Coffee Ritual bloggers,

I can taste the coffee with the perfect foam but being French I can't take the paper cup whatever it looks like.
I have to admit that it's also difficult for me to accept styrofoam and plastic forks. Fisher-Price toy style food can be OK for a moment, but less for a regular habit. The table, the cutlery etc form the ritual that will help collecting the individual together (and read further - it feels like the notion of service might be older than we think).
It's interesting to read the association of pressure-perfect-smile withcoffee as coffee would be a pavlovian reflex to pressure. That seems very cultural to me and I would love you to emphasize on the commercial aspect of selling a person with the beverage > the service is being sold, not the actual atoms of the product.
That relates very much to neo-liberalism and the merchandizing of culture, here is an article: http://www.rinf.com/columnists/news/neoliberalism-globalization-and-of-global-culture
Abstract:

Free trade zones open themselves up to the deluge of millions of products and services and a good proportion of them are cultural, though in a sense not understood hundred years ago.‘When all forms of communication become commodities, then culture, the stuff of communications, inevitably becomes a commodity as well. And that is what’s happening. Culture-the shared experiences that give meaning to human life- is being pulled inexorably into the Media marketplace, where it is being revamped along commercial lines’ (Rifkin, 2000: 140).

In addition to the conditioning aspect of neo-liberalism I suggest you look at how time is understood and used as a tool, asset, commodity in this new culture we’re living (can we still use the word culture..). Also the notions of property of a liquid, commodity, and private use of a container are worth questioning.
see you in class! PG
FOR ALL BLOGGERS: I need a good summary and conclusion at the end of each blog on WEEK 13!!
The blog is a research depository but also needs PROCESSED information and INSIGHT at the end of it :-)
Marking criteria are based on work and amount of greymatter spent on the assignment.

Hello,

Welcome to the Think Tank Convergence GDES 3A01 section 17 blog:
"Coffee ritual analysis - the real role of design, time stamping"


All student posting and comments are encouraged, it constitutes part of the work that is expected outside class time.

See you soon!
best,
Priam GIVORD