Magus Edwin Diaz

   

               
                   
                        
   

       

As the internet café celebrates its 10th
birthday, what future does it face as net access at home becomes an
everyday reality for more and more people?

Oh, the novelty of it all: surfing the net while sipping from a cup of frothy coffee.

It’s exactly 10 years since what is widely believed to
be the UK’s first internet café, Cyberia, opened in a back street in
London’s West End.

In September 1994, the Zeitgeist established its ghostly
presence at this upstart enterprise, where internet access could be
bought for £3-an-hour.

   

       
   

       

   

As if to emphasise the sheer modernity of it all,
customers could pass the time at one of the dozen or so computer
terminals by imbibing a distinctly exotic coffee: a cappuccino.

And there was plenty of time to pass, with download
speeds some 50-times slower than today’s broadband connection it could
take several minutes to summon a web page.

Cyberia was nevertheless a hit, and spawned thousands of
imitators. Ironically though, for founder Eva Pascoe, the first influx
of customers were all men.

   
   

            

            

       

We almost had a one-to-one staff-to-customer ratio, customers needed so much help                                                           Eva Pascoe on no-so-savvy net users

   
"For the first three days the queue outside was three-deep," recalls Ms
Pascoe, who was a Polish PhD student studying in London at the time.
"The idea had been to create an environment that would draw women into
using technology because at the time the internet was dominated by
men."

Men or women, the customers often needed nursing through the basics of internet usage, for which staff were on hand.

"So little was known about the net and searching was so
difficult that we almost had a one-to-one staff-to-customer ratio, they
needed so much help."

Cyberia eventually folded, but its legacy lives on in
the 20,000 internet cafes dotted around the globe, from market towns in
Devon to Novosibirsk, the capital of, err, Siberia.

But as home access to the net has grown, the initial vision for cyber cafes has narrowed.

Social forum

Once hyped as an emerging forum for community life, a
sort of Lyon’s tea house for the 21st Century, many of today’s internet
cafés are impersonal and functional.

Meeting place or just an e-mail pit-stop?

Much of this is down to the fact that, in the UK at least, some 50% of homes now have internet access.

For many people there’s simply no need to pop down to the local internet café to fire off an e-mail or order a book from Amazon.

A more notable impact has been for backpackers and
itinerant workers, who previously relied on an erratic combination of
phone calls and post restante (where post offices keep mail for people
who call for it).

A recent survey found more than two-thirds of British
travellers regularly use e-mail while abroad, although many also resort
to text messaging.

Eva Pascoe thinks the internet café formula probably has about another 10 years before it burns itself out.

Yet there is evidence that the idea is being reinvented.
The Living Space in London’s Waterloo district is one example of an
cyber café with a different vision.

Wireless access for all?

Opened two years ago, the café is attempting to reach
out to the surrounding community while also attracting travellers
looking for an e-mail pit-stop.

The café offers free off-peak net access to over-50s,
job seekers and young people, runs courses in information technology
and homework clubs. Its profits are ploughed back into creating job
opportunities for locals.

Manager John Houlihan calls it a "social enterprise" and emphasises the highly reasonable £1 for an hour rate for net access.

"About half our customers are
travellers who are passing through the area, but it’s very important to
us to use the idea of an internet café as a social base for locals to
meet, talk and learn."

And the future? Mr Houlihan plans a wireless net access
signal to cover a neighbouring housing estate. The effect could be to
turn a whole neighbourhood into one big cyber café.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 7:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.