Electric Cafe

Cafés became popular at the start of the 20th century in Vienna, Paris and Berlin.
They were public places where you could drink coffee and meet people.
The Internet is an international system, with millions of computers, all connected by digital telephone lines. 
If you put the two things together, what do you get? A cyber café.
I went to Cyberia, London’s first Internet café,
to find out about the connection between using computers and drinking coffee.

According to the people at Cyberia, cyber cafés started because many people thought it would be a good idea to combine computers with a place to have a good cup of coffee in public.
When I first heard about it, I didn’t know what to think.

What kind of person would go to this place? Would I find trendy people with strange clothes and silly haircuts?
Or would the café be full of computer nerds with brains the size of planets?

Luckily I was wrong about both. Cyberia is a small café in the centre of London. As you walk in,
you notice that there is a computer at every table. There are about 15 machines in total.
I arrived at about 1:00 pm, the busiest time of day, according to the man by the cappuccino machine.
The room was full of all types of different people, men and women, young and old.
Some people chatted and drank coffee while others stared into computer monitors.
Behind the register, I noticed the price list. It costs £1.20 for a cup of coffee,
and £2.50 for half an hour on a computer connected to the Internet.

People use the system in many different ways. You can search for information about a topic,
or talk to people who are interested in the same topics as you.
For example, Bon Jovi fans could get together and chat about rock music.
People leave messages for each other by e-mail. They also play interactive games,
read online newspapers, watch video clips and listen to music from the latest albums.
The list of ways to use the Internet ranges from serious to the silly.
There’s even a “useless” group where people talk about silly topics (like what they had for lunch).
One man wants other users to leave messages for his cat (because the cat is all alone in his house during the day!)

Using the Internet is so massive that it’s easy to get lost.
Sometimes you have to search for a long time to find what you’re looking for.
Perhaps that’s why people talk about “surfing the Net”.
The system can be powerful and unpredictable, like the ocean.

So if you can’t afford the Internet at home,
pay a visit to a cyber café and enjoy “surfing” for a small amount of money.