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Article ID: CBB957584998

Breakfast at Buck’s: Informality, Intimacy, and Innovation in Silicon Valley (2020)

Shapin, Steven B. (Author)

Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 35
Pages: 324-347

DOI: 10.1086/708943

URI: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/708943

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This is a study of some connections between eating-together and knowing-together. Silicon Valley technoscientific innovation typically involves a coming-together of entrepreneurs (having an idea) and venture capitalists (having private capital to turn the idea into commercial reality). Attention is directed here to a well-publicized type of face-to-face meeting that may occur early in relationships between VCs and entrepreneurs. The specific case treated here is a large number of breakfast meetings occurring over the past twenty-five years or so at a modest restaurant called Buck’s in Woodside, California. Why is it this restaurant? What is it about Buck’s that draws these people? What happens at these meals? And why is it breakfast (as opposed to other sorts of meals)? This article goes on to discuss historical changes in the patterns of daily meals and accompanying changes in the modes of interaction that happen at mealtimes. Breakfast at Buck’s may be a small thing, but its consideration is a way of understanding some quotidian processes of late modern innovation, and it offers a possible model for further inquiries into eating and knowing.

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