Java the Hut.

In his article, Java Man, Malcolm Gladstone infers that caffeine’s infusion in our society is positive. He supports his claim by providing examples of caffeine’s influence on society throughout the course of history. Gladstone uses examples of the drug’s effortless adaptability in our culture in order to prove its use has been positive.
Gladstone’s research is evident when he introduces the subject of drugs and their power over societal culture. Taking from a Colombia historian he references the diverse opinions that different groups of people have had on certain drugs showing how perspectives can change dramatically from society to society. He points out however (citing his research on Bealer and Weinberg) that caffeine bears no equal in its ability to adapt. He cites the different forms of people who indulge in caffeine from, “café intellectuals and artists, housewives to zen Monks.”
Gladstone cites eighteenth-century Europe when he considers coffee’s reputation as “the thinker’s drink.” He uses this research in order to show how smoking while drinking coffee led to the emergence of people conversing intelligently (as opposed to drunk) and for prolonged periods in Café bars, which in turn led to the Renaissance. Although I think this is plausible beucase his historical citations and inferences are credible, the establishment of this credibility is ineffective. It doesn’t convince me that people started thinking clearer because of coffee itself, but again, it is plausible.
In order to support the notion that coffee is good for you in a variety of ways, Gladstone refers to the Erdos, the Mathematician who without coffee was not able to perform up to par. With it, Erdos was a machine for turning coffee into theorems. This piece of information was also credible, but ineffective in convincing me that coffee was the sole driving force behind Erdos’s work, as if one depended on coffee as much one depends on food or water or sleep even.
His assumption that drinking coffee led to the Industrial revolution is preposterous, but is credible in the way he uses Bealer and Weinbergs information to back it. Yes, I can see how people would be influenced by coffee, but the industrial revolution was caused by a number of reasons, and coffee isn’t one of the top ones.
I find it hard to disagree with his closing statements on caffeine being the best and most useful drug, but as possible as the scenarios he uses may be, they are a bit exaggerated.