fine-dining-guide.com | Editorial | Internet meets Coffee Houses? May 2007

The internet meets coffee houses? April '07
There is long standing debate about "who
invented the internet" Naturally, as one of the
great inventions of our times there are many
who would relish the tag of inventor.

I used to believe that Stanford University
Networks was the original embryonic internet
assisted by the development of TCP/IP, Xerox
PARCS' ethernet and the birth of the 'small
computer' - The IBM PC.

Well in fact the original original internet was
the conception of JCR Licklider of
Massachusets Institute of Technology. His
series of memos in 1962 described the
possibility of a "Galactic Network"

The first network bourne out of his idea was
part of a US Military Research Facility called
DARPA. DARPA was created to enable the
US to respond to a potential nuclear attack.
The "internet" would allow uninterrupted
inter-state control of technology systems in
the event that one particular city was hit by the
bomb.

All a little confusing, certainly heavy stuff!

Today, the internet is the pervasive technology
we know and love. Next generation meeting
places for people to do anything from chat to
conduct business on a 24 hour, 7 day a week
basis.

The leading edge developments on the
internet like www.secondlife.com (now
supported by the might of IBM) go a step
further, taking virtual reality gaming technology
(Sony Playstation 3, XBox, Wii etc) and using
it to create a new virtual world. Take a look!

So what on earth is the link between the
internet and coffee? Well slightly more than a
tenuous one, once you look at them in the
correct historical context.

Rewind to the early to mid 1600s. The coffee
house culture developed out of the early
imports of the drink to Britain. As a beverage,
the spread of the drink was roughly equal
across Europe.

The coffee house became the centre of urban
culture .

These establishments were far more gritty
and down to earth than the Star bucks and
Costa coffee of today. Hard as it may be to
imagine, they were also more ubiquitous than
their modern day counterparts.

Each coffee house attracted regulars
associated with a particular social theme -
artists, intellectuals, businessmen and so
on. Indeed as social forums they proved to be
hotbeds, generating a significant sub-culture
of creativity.

The common term ‘penny university’ became
adopted as it was said you could learn more
in a day at a coffee shop than in a month of
reading. A penny was the price of a drink and
a newspaper.

The most important aspect was the gathering
of a social network. Many of these 'themed'
houses went onto form an array of now long
established gentlemen’s clubs that have
survived to today and continued the tradition of
matching the theme of their predecessor.

Since Plato’s defining work on society - The
Republic - western civilisation has noted the
need for censorship and as such, coffee
houses were frowned upon by aspects of
government as encouraging subversiveness
and promoting destabilising influences on the
establishment.

Aside from the doomed students in Victor
Hugo’s classic Les Miserables, the over-
riding historical account of these meeting
places is more than positive: Edward Lloyd’s
Coffee House on Lombard Street bore Lloyd’s
of London and likewise Jonathan’s lead to the
Bank of England.

Lloyds of London

The internet is without question the modern
day virtual meeting place for exchange of
knowledge, ideas, creativity and generation of
business. It too, is also worryingly lacking
structured censorship. Maybe this is a small
price to pay for the ‘penny university’ of today.

It is perhaps apt then that some years ago the
original public meeting place for those
wishing to use the internet was in cafes,
serving coffee. A romantic coming together in
one house of creativity.