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« Who's Hot Today? Seattle (and the Rest of the Intel List) | Main | Boingo Adds Boston »

June 7, 2005

High-Minded Coffeehouse Thoughts

Could pulling Wi-Fi improve discourse and create intellectual pursuits? Tom Standage, author of A History of the World in Six Glasses and technology editor of The Economist, offers this commentary on why turning off Wi-Fi might be a good thing for the commerce of ideas. "Turning off the Wi-Fi keeps coffeeshops true to their roots," he says on today's Marketplace Morning Report.

Standage recounts how early coffeehouses created cultures of ideas, and inspired Newton to write Principia Mathematica. Also, more (or less?) importantly, the French Revolution was ignited in one. Standage points out that coffee and commerce are connected, but face-to-face conversation need more priority.

3 Comments

Nothing will improve intellectual discourse in this age of "Idols" and "Extreme Makeover", not even turning off Wi-Fi. Maybe turning off electricity so as to prevent people from watching TV would help.

As for cafes being the hotbed of revolution, actually I just read that a number of serious uprisings in Europe in the 19th century started in opera houses. Naturally the opera of the day wasn't something weepy like Madame Butterfly or La Boheme, but a rabble-rousing story involving fictional revolutionary figures. You wonder why the authorities even allowed these things. Think about this: revolutionary opera plus lots of people in a small hot venue plus incendiary political situation outside....

I don't have the patience right now to listen to the commentary, but this anti-coffeeshop wifi thing is pretty ridiculous. I'm 28, and I first started going to coffeeshops in Colorado and then California when I was 10. Anyone who thinks that wifi has made things worse has no memory or didn't spend much time in coffeeshops back in the day. Occasionally, in certain locales, you find lively spots. But in my experience, before wifi there were books, and newspapers, and small groups of friends, and very little intellectual discourse.

This is a simple matter. If some shops think that not having wifi is better for them financially, that's fine for them. I'll go elsewhere. "Analysts" should stop trying to make this out to be some grand social statement about a coffeeshop culture that isn't all that different than it was ten years ago, just more ubiquitious.

I wish I'd heard the original commentary, because this doesn't make sense. Did Standage suggest that use of the Internet somehow discourages or weakens "cultures of ideas?" How so?

This is so absurd that I wonder if he was being ironic and actually arguing the opposite point.

Turning off electric lights and appliances and dismantling the plumbing and the earthquake retrofitting also keeps cafes true to their roots. Perhaps Starbucks should hire Ted Kaczynski as a management consultant.