How a coffee-order chatbot turned into a bank

boing
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All at once, three responses crowd my mind:

  1. this is pretty much the same way Linux got started. Initially, all Torvolds wanted was a terminal emulator. But by the time all the features he wanted were there, it was something else entirely.

  2. There’s quite a lot of external stability that the coffee machine doesn’t have to take account of. It sounds like a functional office, with slow enough turnaround that the employees can trust each other. And there’s a fast enough rate of transaction (liquidity?) that the system is constantly being reinforced.

  3. Another group that I would think would be all over this, is the time bank people. Ithaca hours is the best known, but there are dozens of other systems that would love to be this successful. Which makes me wonder what I’m not hearing about time bank systems. How hard is it, really? If one suddenly appeared in my neighborhood, what are the chances I’d get (or feel) ripped off?

3 Likes
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Clearly you don’t work with programmers.

2 Likes
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coffee is in the eye of the beholder.

…eye of the beholder is in the coffee?

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