> I’ve seen generations grow up. Some grandparents come in with their grandkids and say, “Anna, remember the jukebox?”
> Today, however, young people no longer come to the bar. They came when we had the dance floor and the music. Today, they like to spend time with the smartphone; they even take it to bed when they go to sleep.
What are we losing, what are we taking away from life, now that we ourselves have become a resource to extract. Probably, a lot.
> Today, [young people] like to spend time with the smartphone; they even take it to bed when they go to sleep.
Recently my parents (in their mid-60ies) were visiting us. At some point I realized that both of them had been quietly sitting at our dinner table for over on hour, eyes glued on their smartphones. They are massively addicted. I have noticed that they get nervous as soon as the smartphone is out of reach, or even in silent mode. They mostly talk to friends via Whatsapp and are in constant fear that they miss out on something or that these friends (which also seem to spend most of their days on Whatsapp) will be offended if they don't reply within 5 minutes to the latest Whatsapp trivia. It is quite a struggle to even get them to turn off their phones when we are having dinner. The Whatsapp messages just keep coming in. My wife recently learned that her mother mostly spends her evenings with posting photos of her life on social media, and broke off contact with her brothers for a few days because they failed to quickly and enthusiastically react to some photos she posted on a family Whatsapp group.
But I guess for Anna Possi, our parents are "young people" and could be her grandchildren...
I feel like she's comparing the young people she sees today with the young people she saw 20/30/40/50 years ago. Not today's young people with today's older people. As you point out - people in their 50's/60's tend to be addicted to their phones too and in my experience have even less etiquette when in public or company.
I agree with you, the infection hit quite a lot of older people very hard as well. I have problem getting some 40somethings to meet in person, even in professional contexts, they are just so soaked in a WhatsApp maelström of utterly irrelevant messages that they are conditioned to answer NOW!
That said, the core of the message should not be judgments between the young and the old, but the problem that we have introduced digital fentanyl into our pockets.
My parents were like that, in a different way. They couldn’t sit in a room without a tv on, even if they had visitors and everyone was talking and not paying attention to the TV. Living room TV was on at least 16 hours a day, just about every day, I bet. So weird. Also had TVs in every bedroom, including rarely-used spare bedrooms. Like they had six TVs in their house at peak. WTF.
(Actually, my in-laws also do the TV thing, or else a laptop playing YouTube trash… plus phones)
I have recently moved into a new accomodation, and my neighbour is an elderly Italian lady in her mid 80s. Our first conversation was about how estranged she feels nowadays that everyone around her, young people but also middle-aged adults, are unable to connect not only with strangers but also among each other, filling every minute of their lives with a smartphone. Even the doctor's waiting room or Sunday mass doesn't feel the same, and she has to force people to snap out of it and just put the bloody phone down. She asked me how did I cope. I said I didn't, really.
We had a beautiful conversation about that as it is a topic that I think about a lot, yet whenever I breach it with any "adult" (millennial or older) the response I get is either a shrug, or denial. Weirdly enough, it is an easier topic to discuss with the younger generations, those that have grown up in the YouTube era, yet deep inside feel there is something crucial that's gone lost in our society and we haven't even started trying to recapture it.
I have always believed the millennial generation to be the only one to do something about it, as it sits right between the major societal upheaval the internet has brought. The older generations are lost to Facebook and inertia, the younger have never even seen the world of before.
When ever in the history of the world were humans not exploited by other humans, in much worse ways than now? I'd rather be google's data source for ads than be someones actual slave for example.
Also I don't really like these luddite sentiments, usually shared between the two extremes, old ladies that never used the internet so they don't understand what they are missing, and IT guys that are too jaded to see the benefits and are at the stage of "wanna become goat farmer". Outside addiction the internet is great.
Some argue you're still one, they give you just enough crumbs so that you shut your mouth and bow your head while you work from birth to death, being taxed every step of the way, with more and more limited privacy and liberties. Meanwhile the top 1% still live like kings, laws barely apply to them, they're in charge of everything even though most of them haven't been elected
To expand, I wonder whether people will wistfully look back on their days browsing tiktok and shitposting on HN compared to whatever they and their kids / parents will be doing in 20 years.
"now that we ourselves have become a resource to extract"
I take your general point, but I'm interested in what you mean by "we" here - the general population or HN readers? People have been a resource to extract from since the beginning of farming, and particularly so since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The difference is perhaps that the attention of rich, western people is being exploited now and is causing this particular concern. Read any first-person accounts of the industrial revolution and the idea that this is anything new falls apart.
> now that we ourselves have become a resource to extract.
This has nothing to do with what you quoted.
Smartphones and their effects are orthogonal to your point. Before smartphones if you were at home you were alone, isolated, and bored, so you went out and met your friends. With smartphones you are always connected to your friends or others and it seems that it reduces the psychological need to meet in person (it's no longer the only option).
That's overly simplistic, people don't go out because they slack 24/7 in front of a screen, not because they're connecting with their friends through their smartphones. From my limited experience 70+ years old spend the whole day in front of youtube/facebook/alternative tv channels mostly watching infotainment that's at best brainrot and very often full blown conspiracy theories / propaganda. Boomers are even worse than teenagers when it comes to that, they're the most gullible and easily screen addicted demographic out there
Went to Japan recently and the young women take social media (particularly Instagram) to a whole nother level over there. They very clearly invest a lot of time and energy into getting the best photos. A lot of the young men just look defeated.
I always find this argument dubious at best. It's akin to saying "A dude was wrong once 2000 years ago, anything new is progress, and progress is desirable".
Socrates said no such thing, no writing of Socrates has survived. He was just a character is Plato's book, Phaedrus.
Please do find the original paragraphs before accusing Socrates of this. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/plato/dialogues/benjamin-j...
Of course, you can read and interpret that same book a thousand different ways, like he was talking about knowledge not being the same as writing things down, or whatever you want. But we don't even pretend to read the things we talk about. We just repeat nice narratives we have supposedly read somewhere else, digested by someone else, somehow.
And he would've been right. Any new advancement in technology brings societal change, and it is possible to reach a point of diminishing return, where the bad sides outweigh the positives.
I wish we could, as a society, have a serious conversation about this effect without resorting to name calling ("Luddist nonsense") and straw men ("but what about penicillin?")
The real explanation is that you cannot find new sex partners in bars anymore. If there's no sex, there's no reason for any kind of social life, human relations, romance, etc. anymore.
It used to be hushed because people thought nothing can keep young people away from each others bodies anyway. However, now it's apparently happened - social media, woke culture, fight for jobs...
People think it is smartphones and social skills. The real reason is men are blackpilled and stopped trying. What we are seeing is only the beginning.
She's vividly awaken with an active mind at 101 yo, it's not a thing for everyone. We try to fix the body decadence problem with technology while ancient seems already discovered it. You can see it in her words and her lifestyle; a simple life, a helpful work, a community that makes you feel appreciated for what you do. All the rest doesn't really matter for longevity.
Btw, the woman is addressing the interviewer using "her", which is a common form of respect, for a person probably half her age.
many people living simple fulfilling lives die much earlier, it's more an exception than the rule (I don't argue that those things doesn't help, just that they alone is not the reason for long healthy life)
I have a pet theory that classical musicians overindex on longevity, and I believe that the fulfilment and community aspects are contributors to their longevity.
No evidence and probably full of bias but seems intuitive enough
I think in her case, she kept working, kept interacting with people on a daily basis. A lot of elderly people see mental / physical decline in part due to inactivity, and doing your daily crosswords or brain trainer isn't enough I think.
I was thinking about robotic baristas the other day and how you might save on costs but you give up so much; If I’m going out for coffee I prefer places where I know the baristas so I get to feel like a part of my community.
There are a couple stores around me run by small families, and honestly sometimes I feel like I'm halfway to being part of their family when I visit. They recognize me, greet me by name, and start firing up my order right away. Or they ask me how I'm doing and I do the same, but it goes deeper than "good, you?" - I'm learning currently about how one dude is trying a year living together with his ex again. I'm praying for 'em every day pretty much. We share recipes, stores, etc.
We will rue every decision we make to remove humans from interactions imo.
I've started regularly visiting a couple coffee shops in Tokyo whenever I go there and I'm on first name basis with the owners/managers, whereas if I go to the same shops in the SF Bay Area more regularly it's rare that anyone recognizes me.
I definitely prefer that neighborhood coffee shop feel and at least shops I go to near home don't have that. Even the smaller ones with similar amounts of business and number of employees as the ones in Tokyo.
Coffee vending machines? That’s what’s inside the box, it’s nothing new really… There are very high quality ones too. It’s not a particularly skilled job for a human to do, besides the customer service aspect of course, perhaps I am ignorant in that regard.
Indeed, coming from Spain, I don’t really see the lady as a barista, she is the classic bartender that listens to you and knows everybody. Except the bar is open throughout the day, is family friendly, sells all kinds besides alcohol (breakfast, coffee, tobacco, lunch, dinner, newspapers, lottery tickets, snacks and sweets…), and generally acts as the social nexus of the neighborhood. These old school small bars are everywhere in southern EU. Within that context it is less surprising that she would stay working there as long as she physically could.
I am also Spanish, living in Japan, and our bars is one the things I miss the most. Seriously, you don't realize how amazing Spanish bars are until you don't have them.
Here I just stop by a konbini, grab a can coffee and a plastic-wrapped sandwich, and off I go. There is no social nexus, and no neighbourhood for that matter. It's depressing.
> Coffee vending machines? That’s what’s inside the box, it’s nothing new really… There are very high quality ones too.
I have yet to see a high-quality one.
I've been at two offices that have automated espresso machines. They'll make something that's labeled as a "Latte", but it's just coffee with powdered milk.
I feel like there are definitely two types of people that are after coffee - the morning commute people that need caffeine, and just want it fast. They'd not notice a machine doing it for them (and a lot of them would have a machine at home!)
The other group is like you and I, where we like engaging with the community.
I suppose three - the Starbucks crew that do it for 'likes'.
The Italian morning caffè ritual is already extremely fast: the barista works at the speed of light and the coffee you get is pretty standard, but in exchange you get a moment to rub shoulders "al banco" with others like you about to go into work, or elders just getting out of the house, a mother taking her kid to school, a policeman taking a break. You say hi to the same few people you've been seeing at the establishment for years. It's familiar and heartwarming.
It's a sprinkling of human connection as you start your day. A small homage to the tradition of coffee culture. Your grandparents did it, your parents did it, you did it, your kids will do it, etc. You rejoice in knowing that, as everything else changes around you, maybe this one minuscule secular ritual will stand the test of time and provide a symbolic sense of continuity with the past.
I think group 3 is a bit of a reach. Most people just treat it as a commodity. You need a break after shopping? Coffee. Meeting someone to talk over something for 30 minutes? Coffee. Need a cozy place to sit and get some work done? Coffee. For none of these do people have to engage with the community or be caffeine addicts.
Robotic baristas - I'm assuming the OP is referring to those 6dof robot arm deployments - are largely novelty or luxury items meant to catch attention. You either see them in touristy areas trying to attract the Instagram crowd, or (increasingly now, after the novelty is starting to wear of) in corporate lobbies trying to impress.
> I was thinking about robotic baristas the other day and how you might save on costs but you give up so much...
How do they save costs?
Their operating cost doesn't beat gas station coffee, and the margins needed to service them end up pricing them the same as human barista coffee.
Automation only works if it helps reduce your COGS, not increase it, and for a product like coffee with already paper thin margins, the cost of servicing a robotic barista ends up not being much different from hiring 2-3 part time baristas while providing a subpar product.
I used to feel the same way, but, then I find it weird that the barista has to be there. I get the sense that some people use them almost like a free therapist since they have a captive audience.
It's an interesting sidebar discussion what are cultural norms on social interaction vs using someone like a free therapist. I guess consent to whatever topic, equal airtime, not saying inappropriate things, not slowing down their work.
Those already exist though, coffee machines have been around for decades. Granted, most of them won't make you a neat milk leaf or tree or whatever, but how important is that to you?
I have a feeling she would have said that 10, 20, 30, and 40 years ago, too.
But she's probably not wrong. Over the course of her life, the US has gone from mostly farm communities which for good or bad have long-standing social networks, to mostly atomized people in cities. We've also gotten incredibly richer as a society, but we don't know each other. If you don't know each other, who can you rely on? I assume that something similar applies to Italy.
I talked with a barista that had worked 10 years at Starbucks and he still made minimum wage after all that time, it was specially worrying since minimum wage in this country it's equivalent to 420 usd a month.
If you are in the US, you also have to incorporate the employer paid benefits in compensation, the big one being health insurance premiums/deductible/out of pocket maximum/provider network size (the premium is easily referred to by looking at W-2 box 12 code DD).
There are also other considerations such as PTO, 401k match, HSA match, DCFSA match, yadda yadda, so the only way to keep up with the market is to always be interviewing and evaluating new offers to compare your current compensation to.
I’ve done this as well. I’m only making twice what I was 30 years ago at 18. (Though to be fair, I was making a ridiculous amount of money for a 18 year old - my first job was in the Qwest network operations center.)
If they worked for a decade and never got a pay rise (other than minimum wage increases), why are they still working there? In an ideal world, you get wage and career progression over time, or move on to a different career otherwise.
Folks rarely have this choice. What industry wants a barista outside food service? This is why we get stuck wearing a green apron for a decade, or working call center jobs, or any other crappy job.
I always think that I would hate to work into my old age, but it's different for some. I can't speak to what Anna's financial situation is like, but the way she talks about her work as part of the community and a way to stay active and independent makes me think that she's content, and that's great. She certainly seems like she's doing well for 101!
I have an uncle that is extremely old and until a year and a half ago he was still working. But he needed a car for his job and he decided that he's going to get rid of the car before he ends someone else's life and so he had to give up his job too. He's a super nice character, has a great sense of humor and in general is probably one of the most fun and optimistic people that I know. He'd be working still if not for the car and I know that the loss of the job and a chunk of his independence is hard for him. But he does not let it get him down for long, just finds new things to do (he's currently studying bridge like his life depends on it).
It's the same reason you see barbers working well into their 70s.
After a lifetime offering a service to your neighbourhood, cutting hair and having a chat, why would you even retire? Just to stare at a wall, useless and lonely?
I can’t imagine I’d ever stop programming as long as I’m mentally and physically capable of it. That doesn’t mean I’d work until I drop, because I can always do hobby projects for myself instead. Being a hobby barista probably doesn’t work quite the same way.
For most people, it proves very disorienting to not be doing something constructive for others, and in a capitalist world, where everything easily becomes transactional and people get a little isolated from deeper community and family, it's kind of organic for that drive to be fulfilled by continuing to work in old age. Lots of people do it by choice.
If you feel like you might be on that road, the smart trick is to start thinking early about what kind of work you might want to take up during that stage and plant the seeds for it early.
Some people don't have a lot of choice to prepare, and just end up falling into being barista because the job is there and they find they enjoy it. But the other barista at that same cafe might be the owner who bought it as their own "retirement", filling shifts when they want to, while giving the neighborhood a place to gather.
If the pensions in Italy are anything like in Spain, she’s making more money off it than young people are making working. Plus she’s probably defrauding the pension system by both collecting her pension and working.
Working past a 100 is a dream of mine (The barista in the article is 101). I don't think too many people are fond of images of old age in the Western popular zeitgeist - care homes, infirmity, increasing disability.
I hope we can cultivate more 'blue zones' across the Planet, such as in Japan and around the Mediterranean. We have the capability to do so.
Personally, if I could stop working tomorrow I would. I have nothing against work, but I do feel that most jobs aren't particularly meaningful, and so they act as a pacifier that fills in our time so we don't need to confront the question of: what do we do with our time?
> but I do feel that most jobs aren't particularly meaningful, and so they act as a pacifier that fills in our time
For like 99% of people, work exists so they can buy a food and a roof over their head.
> the question of: what do we do with our time?
I've got a growing Steam library of games that I've bought but haven't gotten around to playing.
It always surprises me when people complain about being bored after retirement. If you've got disabilities or fading health so don't have the energy or ability to do the things you want, that's understandable. But I'll never understand the people that are able-bodied yet get bored only months into retirement. I just think...what did you do during your free time before you retired? Just stare at the TV?
She reminds me of the old people managing their crumbling shops in Japan that are popular on youtube. Being still able to work is nice, as long as you are not forced to just to survive.
What are we losing, what are we taking away from life, now that we ourselves have become a resource to extract. Probably, a lot.
> Today, [young people] like to spend time with the smartphone; they even take it to bed when they go to sleep.
Recently my parents (in their mid-60ies) were visiting us. At some point I realized that both of them had been quietly sitting at our dinner table for over on hour, eyes glued on their smartphones. They are massively addicted. I have noticed that they get nervous as soon as the smartphone is out of reach, or even in silent mode. They mostly talk to friends via Whatsapp and are in constant fear that they miss out on something or that these friends (which also seem to spend most of their days on Whatsapp) will be offended if they don't reply within 5 minutes to the latest Whatsapp trivia. It is quite a struggle to even get them to turn off their phones when we are having dinner. The Whatsapp messages just keep coming in. My wife recently learned that her mother mostly spends her evenings with posting photos of her life on social media, and broke off contact with her brothers for a few days because they failed to quickly and enthusiastically react to some photos she posted on a family Whatsapp group.
But I guess for Anna Possi, our parents are "young people" and could be her grandchildren...
I feel like she's comparing the young people she sees today with the young people she saw 20/30/40/50 years ago. Not today's young people with today's older people. As you point out - people in their 50's/60's tend to be addicted to their phones too and in my experience have even less etiquette when in public or company.
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I agree with you, the infection hit quite a lot of older people very hard as well. I have problem getting some 40somethings to meet in person, even in professional contexts, they are just so soaked in a WhatsApp maelström of utterly irrelevant messages that they are conditioned to answer NOW!
That said, the core of the message should not be judgments between the young and the old, but the problem that we have introduced digital fentanyl into our pockets.
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My in-laws are like that.
My parents were like that, in a different way. They couldn’t sit in a room without a tv on, even if they had visitors and everyone was talking and not paying attention to the TV. Living room TV was on at least 16 hours a day, just about every day, I bet. So weird. Also had TVs in every bedroom, including rarely-used spare bedrooms. Like they had six TVs in their house at peak. WTF.
(Actually, my in-laws also do the TV thing, or else a laptop playing YouTube trash… plus phones)
I have recently moved into a new accomodation, and my neighbour is an elderly Italian lady in her mid 80s. Our first conversation was about how estranged she feels nowadays that everyone around her, young people but also middle-aged adults, are unable to connect not only with strangers but also among each other, filling every minute of their lives with a smartphone. Even the doctor's waiting room or Sunday mass doesn't feel the same, and she has to force people to snap out of it and just put the bloody phone down. She asked me how did I cope. I said I didn't, really.
We had a beautiful conversation about that as it is a topic that I think about a lot, yet whenever I breach it with any "adult" (millennial or older) the response I get is either a shrug, or denial. Weirdly enough, it is an easier topic to discuss with the younger generations, those that have grown up in the YouTube era, yet deep inside feel there is something crucial that's gone lost in our society and we haven't even started trying to recapture it.
I have always believed the millennial generation to be the only one to do something about it, as it sits right between the major societal upheaval the internet has brought. The older generations are lost to Facebook and inertia, the younger have never even seen the world of before.
When ever in the history of the world were humans not exploited by other humans, in much worse ways than now? I'd rather be google's data source for ads than be someones actual slave for example.
Also I don't really like these luddite sentiments, usually shared between the two extremes, old ladies that never used the internet so they don't understand what they are missing, and IT guys that are too jaded to see the benefits and are at the stage of "wanna become goat farmer". Outside addiction the internet is great.
"Outside addiction the internet is great."
So are painkillers, or alcohol. Still we shouldn't simply shrug our shoulders over their abuse.
We need to find a rational way to treat smartphones. As of now, we are fully in the Gin Craze [0] phase of their use and moderation is badly needed.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Craze
> than be someones actual slave for example.
Some argue you're still one, they give you just enough crumbs so that you shut your mouth and bow your head while you work from birth to death, being taxed every step of the way, with more and more limited privacy and liberties. Meanwhile the top 1% still live like kings, laws barely apply to them, they're in charge of everything even though most of them haven't been elected
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Did we really just bring up and contrast current exploitation to slavery as an attempt defend social media?
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To expand, I wonder whether people will wistfully look back on their days browsing tiktok and shitposting on HN compared to whatever they and their kids / parents will be doing in 20 years.
> What are we losing, what are we taking away from life, now that we ourselves have become a resource to extract. Probably, a lot.
Beautifully said. And sad.
"now that we ourselves have become a resource to extract"
I take your general point, but I'm interested in what you mean by "we" here - the general population or HN readers? People have been a resource to extract from since the beginning of farming, and particularly so since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The difference is perhaps that the attention of rich, western people is being exploited now and is causing this particular concern. Read any first-person accounts of the industrial revolution and the idea that this is anything new falls apart.
> now that we ourselves have become a resource to extract.
This has nothing to do with what you quoted.
Smartphones and their effects are orthogonal to your point. Before smartphones if you were at home you were alone, isolated, and bored, so you went out and met your friends. With smartphones you are always connected to your friends or others and it seems that it reduces the psychological need to meet in person (it's no longer the only option).
That's overly simplistic, people don't go out because they slack 24/7 in front of a screen, not because they're connecting with their friends through their smartphones. From my limited experience 70+ years old spend the whole day in front of youtube/facebook/alternative tv channels mostly watching infotainment that's at best brainrot and very often full blown conspiracy theories / propaganda. Boomers are even worse than teenagers when it comes to that, they're the most gullible and easily screen addicted demographic out there
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Went to Japan recently and the young women take social media (particularly Instagram) to a whole nother level over there. They very clearly invest a lot of time and energy into getting the best photos. A lot of the young men just look defeated.
The most profound colonization and erasure of human culture worldwide that has ever occurred
Socrates would have drawn the line at writing and reading texts.
I always find this argument dubious at best. It's akin to saying "A dude was wrong once 2000 years ago, anything new is progress, and progress is desirable".
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Socrates said no such thing, no writing of Socrates has survived. He was just a character is Plato's book, Phaedrus. Please do find the original paragraphs before accusing Socrates of this. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/plato/dialogues/benjamin-j... Of course, you can read and interpret that same book a thousand different ways, like he was talking about knowledge not being the same as writing things down, or whatever you want. But we don't even pretend to read the things we talk about. We just repeat nice narratives we have supposedly read somewhere else, digested by someone else, somehow.
And he would've been right. Any new advancement in technology brings societal change, and it is possible to reach a point of diminishing return, where the bad sides outweigh the positives.
I wish we could, as a society, have a serious conversation about this effect without resorting to name calling ("Luddist nonsense") and straw men ("but what about penicillin?")
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The real explanation is that you cannot find new sex partners in bars anymore. If there's no sex, there's no reason for any kind of social life, human relations, romance, etc. anymore.
It used to be hushed because people thought nothing can keep young people away from each others bodies anyway. However, now it's apparently happened - social media, woke culture, fight for jobs...
People think it is smartphones and social skills. The real reason is men are blackpilled and stopped trying. What we are seeing is only the beginning.
Are we the bad guys?
If you have to ask?
She's vividly awaken with an active mind at 101 yo, it's not a thing for everyone. We try to fix the body decadence problem with technology while ancient seems already discovered it. You can see it in her words and her lifestyle; a simple life, a helpful work, a community that makes you feel appreciated for what you do. All the rest doesn't really matter for longevity.
Btw, the woman is addressing the interviewer using "her", which is a common form of respect, for a person probably half her age.
many people living simple fulfilling lives die much earlier, it's more an exception than the rule (I don't argue that those things doesn't help, just that they alone is not the reason for long healthy life)
I have a pet theory that classical musicians overindex on longevity, and I believe that the fulfilment and community aspects are contributors to their longevity.
No evidence and probably full of bias but seems intuitive enough
I think in her case, she kept working, kept interacting with people on a daily basis. A lot of elderly people see mental / physical decline in part due to inactivity, and doing your daily crosswords or brain trainer isn't enough I think.
I was thinking about robotic baristas the other day and how you might save on costs but you give up so much; If I’m going out for coffee I prefer places where I know the baristas so I get to feel like a part of my community.
There are a couple stores around me run by small families, and honestly sometimes I feel like I'm halfway to being part of their family when I visit. They recognize me, greet me by name, and start firing up my order right away. Or they ask me how I'm doing and I do the same, but it goes deeper than "good, you?" - I'm learning currently about how one dude is trying a year living together with his ex again. I'm praying for 'em every day pretty much. We share recipes, stores, etc.
We will rue every decision we make to remove humans from interactions imo.
I've started regularly visiting a couple coffee shops in Tokyo whenever I go there and I'm on first name basis with the owners/managers, whereas if I go to the same shops in the SF Bay Area more regularly it's rare that anyone recognizes me.
I definitely prefer that neighborhood coffee shop feel and at least shops I go to near home don't have that. Even the smaller ones with similar amounts of business and number of employees as the ones in Tokyo.
> how one dude is trying a year living together with his ex again
Get us in, how is it going so far? :-D
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> robotic baristas
Coffee vending machines? That’s what’s inside the box, it’s nothing new really… There are very high quality ones too. It’s not a particularly skilled job for a human to do, besides the customer service aspect of course, perhaps I am ignorant in that regard.
Indeed, coming from Spain, I don’t really see the lady as a barista, she is the classic bartender that listens to you and knows everybody. Except the bar is open throughout the day, is family friendly, sells all kinds besides alcohol (breakfast, coffee, tobacco, lunch, dinner, newspapers, lottery tickets, snacks and sweets…), and generally acts as the social nexus of the neighborhood. These old school small bars are everywhere in southern EU. Within that context it is less surprising that she would stay working there as long as she physically could.
I am also Spanish, living in Japan, and our bars is one the things I miss the most. Seriously, you don't realize how amazing Spanish bars are until you don't have them.
Here I just stop by a konbini, grab a can coffee and a plastic-wrapped sandwich, and off I go. There is no social nexus, and no neighbourhood for that matter. It's depressing.
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> Coffee vending machines? That’s what’s inside the box, it’s nothing new really… There are very high quality ones too.
I have yet to see a high-quality one.
I've been at two offices that have automated espresso machines. They'll make something that's labeled as a "Latte", but it's just coffee with powdered milk.
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I feel like there are definitely two types of people that are after coffee - the morning commute people that need caffeine, and just want it fast. They'd not notice a machine doing it for them (and a lot of them would have a machine at home!)
The other group is like you and I, where we like engaging with the community.
I suppose three - the Starbucks crew that do it for 'likes'.
The Italian morning caffè ritual is already extremely fast: the barista works at the speed of light and the coffee you get is pretty standard, but in exchange you get a moment to rub shoulders "al banco" with others like you about to go into work, or elders just getting out of the house, a mother taking her kid to school, a policeman taking a break. You say hi to the same few people you've been seeing at the establishment for years. It's familiar and heartwarming.
It's a sprinkling of human connection as you start your day. A small homage to the tradition of coffee culture. Your grandparents did it, your parents did it, you did it, your kids will do it, etc. You rejoice in knowing that, as everything else changes around you, maybe this one minuscule secular ritual will stand the test of time and provide a symbolic sense of continuity with the past.
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I think group 3 is a bit of a reach. Most people just treat it as a commodity. You need a break after shopping? Coffee. Meeting someone to talk over something for 30 minutes? Coffee. Need a cozy place to sit and get some work done? Coffee. For none of these do people have to engage with the community or be caffeine addicts.
I’m obviously out of touch. What do these starbucks people do exactly.
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Even for morning commute people who need caffeine, getting to chat with a human beats having a machine to do it.
> you might save on costs but you give up so much
Modern society, and the push to optimize every single thing that can be measured, in a nutshell.
Nobody is rolling these out to optimize anything.
Robotic baristas - I'm assuming the OP is referring to those 6dof robot arm deployments - are largely novelty or luxury items meant to catch attention. You either see them in touristy areas trying to attract the Instagram crowd, or (increasingly now, after the novelty is starting to wear of) in corporate lobbies trying to impress.
A local roasters recently opened up a cafe (again, they had one but lost their space some years ago).
Having only been there three times now, each time I've gotten into long conversations about technique and equipment with the baristas.
Is it possible to have a robot pour as good a filter or pull as good a shot? Probably. But I don't go to cafés just for that.
> I was thinking about robotic baristas the other day and how you might save on costs but you give up so much...
How do they save costs?
Their operating cost doesn't beat gas station coffee, and the margins needed to service them end up pricing them the same as human barista coffee.
Automation only works if it helps reduce your COGS, not increase it, and for a product like coffee with already paper thin margins, the cost of servicing a robotic barista ends up not being much different from hiring 2-3 part time baristas while providing a subpar product.
I used to feel the same way, but, then I find it weird that the barista has to be there. I get the sense that some people use them almost like a free therapist since they have a captive audience.
It's an interesting sidebar discussion what are cultural norms on social interaction vs using someone like a free therapist. I guess consent to whatever topic, equal airtime, not saying inappropriate things, not slowing down their work.
At that point just make your coffee at home.
Those already exist though, coffee machines have been around for decades. Granted, most of them won't make you a neat milk leaf or tree or whatever, but how important is that to you?
This is right, coffee is a lot about people and interaction. It's about being around people.
Between the lines you can hear the eulogy for a healthy economy and dense social network which have, now, mostly rotted away.
> I tell my granddaughters: work, save, don’t depend on anyone. The world is getting harder.
This woman lived through fascist Italy and everything that came after, and then says this about the way the world is going.
I have a feeling she would have said that 10, 20, 30, and 40 years ago, too.
But she's probably not wrong. Over the course of her life, the US has gone from mostly farm communities which for good or bad have long-standing social networks, to mostly atomized people in cities. We've also gotten incredibly richer as a society, but we don't know each other. If you don't know each other, who can you rely on? I assume that something similar applies to Italy.
Reading the writing on the wall perhaps.
In Soviet Russia, Rome is a poor city I guess
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I talked with a barista that had worked 10 years at Starbucks and he still made minimum wage after all that time, it was specially worrying since minimum wage in this country it's equivalent to 420 usd a month.
I once decided to plot my salaries corrected for inflation and found out that they only really went up a couple of times in 30 years.
If you are in the US, you also have to incorporate the employer paid benefits in compensation, the big one being health insurance premiums/deductible/out of pocket maximum/provider network size (the premium is easily referred to by looking at W-2 box 12 code DD).
There are also other considerations such as PTO, 401k match, HSA match, DCFSA match, yadda yadda, so the only way to keep up with the market is to always be interviewing and evaluating new offers to compare your current compensation to.
I’ve done this as well. I’m only making twice what I was 30 years ago at 18. (Though to be fair, I was making a ridiculous amount of money for a 18 year old - my first job was in the Qwest network operations center.)
If they worked for a decade and never got a pay rise (other than minimum wage increases), why are they still working there? In an ideal world, you get wage and career progression over time, or move on to a different career otherwise.
> or move on to a different career otherwise.
Folks rarely have this choice. What industry wants a barista outside food service? This is why we get stuck wearing a green apron for a decade, or working call center jobs, or any other crappy job.
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However the world we live in is not ideal, and wages are being systematically crushed by capital.
I know that he was learning programming on the side so his plan was to work on that, I don't know how that ended up.
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I always think that I would hate to work into my old age, but it's different for some. I can't speak to what Anna's financial situation is like, but the way she talks about her work as part of the community and a way to stay active and independent makes me think that she's content, and that's great. She certainly seems like she's doing well for 101!
I have an uncle that is extremely old and until a year and a half ago he was still working. But he needed a car for his job and he decided that he's going to get rid of the car before he ends someone else's life and so he had to give up his job too. He's a super nice character, has a great sense of humor and in general is probably one of the most fun and optimistic people that I know. He'd be working still if not for the car and I know that the loss of the job and a chunk of his independence is hard for him. But he does not let it get him down for long, just finds new things to do (he's currently studying bridge like his life depends on it).
Working for a larger soul sucking corporation that long would be spiritually crushing.
But serving your community coffee every day seems like a great way to stay involved in your community doing something useful.
It's the same reason you see barbers working well into their 70s.
After a lifetime offering a service to your neighbourhood, cutting hair and having a chat, why would you even retire? Just to stare at a wall, useless and lonely?
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I can’t imagine I’d ever stop programming as long as I’m mentally and physically capable of it. That doesn’t mean I’d work until I drop, because I can always do hobby projects for myself instead. Being a hobby barista probably doesn’t work quite the same way.
For most people, it proves very disorienting to not be doing something constructive for others, and in a capitalist world, where everything easily becomes transactional and people get a little isolated from deeper community and family, it's kind of organic for that drive to be fulfilled by continuing to work in old age. Lots of people do it by choice.
If you feel like you might be on that road, the smart trick is to start thinking early about what kind of work you might want to take up during that stage and plant the seeds for it early.
Some people don't have a lot of choice to prepare, and just end up falling into being barista because the job is there and they find they enjoy it. But the other barista at that same cafe might be the owner who bought it as their own "retirement", filling shifts when they want to, while giving the neighborhood a place to gather.
>and in a capitalist world, where everything easily becomes transactional and people get a little isolated from deeper community and family,
What does this have to do with capitalism?
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If the pensions in Italy are anything like in Spain, she’s making more money off it than young people are making working. Plus she’s probably defrauding the pension system by both collecting her pension and working.
Is it defrauding it if you contributed to it all your working life?
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This is very near my hometown (Nebbiuno; I am from Verbania).
Lots of very old people here. The world's oldest lady used to be from Verbania, she died at 117.
Northern Italy is less loud than southern Italy but it has a quiet beauty.
There's dozens of us from that neck of the woods! (I'm 30 km away from Lago Maggiore)
If you ever pass through Liguria, I can even treat you to a coffee. (But nothing more, eh! )
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Working past a 100 is a dream of mine (The barista in the article is 101). I don't think too many people are fond of images of old age in the Western popular zeitgeist - care homes, infirmity, increasing disability.
I hope we can cultivate more 'blue zones' across the Planet, such as in Japan and around the Mediterranean. We have the capability to do so.
I'm not sold on the whole blue zone thing... here is an HN discussion on a paper refuting some of the claims that won an Ig Nobel prize last year:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41738434
Personally, if I could stop working tomorrow I would. I have nothing against work, but I do feel that most jobs aren't particularly meaningful, and so they act as a pacifier that fills in our time so we don't need to confront the question of: what do we do with our time?
When my dad retired, he basically stopped doing much of anything outside of watching television.
I think if I could afford to retire tomorrow, I'd have no trouble keeping myself busy for the rest of my life.
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> but I do feel that most jobs aren't particularly meaningful, and so they act as a pacifier that fills in our time
For like 99% of people, work exists so they can buy a food and a roof over their head.
> the question of: what do we do with our time?
I've got a growing Steam library of games that I've bought but haven't gotten around to playing.
It always surprises me when people complain about being bored after retirement. If you've got disabilities or fading health so don't have the energy or ability to do the things you want, that's understandable. But I'll never understand the people that are able-bodied yet get bored only months into retirement. I just think...what did you do during your free time before you retired? Just stare at the TV?
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I’ll never stop working for some definition of work. I will stop doing the things I don’t want to do.
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She reminds me of the old people managing their crumbling shops in Japan that are popular on youtube. Being still able to work is nice, as long as you are not forced to just to survive.
I wonder what happened to the dance floor. It appears at some point, and then apparently it disappears again too, because the youth stop coming.
https://archive.is/D6o9S
This lady keeps popping up on Hacker News every 3 months :D God bless her!
Can you imagine the insights on human behaviour that she has had?
God damn!
Always love reading interviews with Italy's youth ;)
Great interview with this Australian who's almost a teen ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487077
Thanks for the SensibleChuckle (Bit of Aussie humour there haha)
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