Category Archives: glocal

advocacy, aesthetics, Alcohol, art, Beer, cluetrain, Cluetrain Manifesto, community-building, consumerism, consumption, craft beer, craft beer culture, creativity, cuisine, cultural capital, cultural diversity, democracy, development strategies, economics, ethnocentrism, Ethnography, experience, expertise, food and society, foodies, globalization, glocal, grassroots, groupthink, hegemony, individualism, joie de vivre, leapfrog effect, location-specific, market economy, marketing, mass media, moral enterpreneurs, musings, nationalism, nostalgie, playfulness, pleasure, podcasts, product and process, productivity, Radio Open Source, rants, responsible drinking, snobbery, social capital, social change, social dynamics, social networks, standardization, statistics, success in life, taste, tasting, trendiness, trusting people, United States, universalism, writing

Individualism, Freedom, and Food

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A surprisingly superficial podcast episode on what could have been a very deep subject.

Open Source » Blog Archive » The End of Free Will?

start a conversation about manipulation, persuasion and freedom from choice

To summarize the main issue of that episode: is marketing and "upselling" by restaurant chains undermining the individual freedom to choose quality food? Apparently simple a question, but billed as much more than that.

Maybe they refrained from delving deeper into any of those issues because philosophical discussions, perhaps aesthetic ones especially, are off limits in "polite company" in U.S. media. Too bad.

Actually, I’m genuinely disappointed. Not necessarily because restaurant chains are very important an issue for me (in Montreal, they don’t seem to have the exact same type of impact and I love to cook). But because the show’s participants all came very close to saying very important things about individualism, food, and freedom. The first two are too rarely discussed, IMHO, and the third could have been the "hook" to discuss the other two.

Ah, well…

If you want to know more about my thoughts on this podcast episode, check out some of the tags below.

alter-globalization, Beer, brewpubs, café, Coffee, coffee scenes, consumption, craft beer, globalization, glocal, grassroots, innovation, local, localization, Montreal, music, music scenes, performance, product and process, ramblings, taste

Glocal Craftiness: Coffee, Beer, Music

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Was listening to the portafilter.net podcast (Episode 23) and thinking about coffee shops, cafés, brewpubs, bars, bands, venues…

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glocal

South Station Pulsepoint

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South Station Pulsepoint
There's an open WiFi network in Boston's South Station. It's not connected to the Internet itself but it represents a neat concept for location-specific networks. It's not available from the outside world (i.e., you need to be in the South Station to access it) but it can connect people who just happen to pass by the South Station, a major hub for those traveling to and from Boston with bus lines, subway lines, Amtrak trains, and commuter rail all in the same place.

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