Internet coffeehouse: The Economist broods

The Economist thinks again about the coffeehouse-cyberspace comparison.

In discussion groups and chatrooms, gossip passes freely—a little too freely, think some regulators and governments, which have tried and generally failed to rein them in. Snippets of political news are rounded up and analysed in weblogs, those modern equivalents of pamphlets and broadsides. Obscure scientific and medical papers, once available only to specialists, are just clicks away; many scientists explain their work, both to their colleagues and to the public at large, on web pages. Countless new companies and business models have emerged, not many of them successful, though one or two have become household names. Online exchanges and auction houses, from eBay to industry-specific marketplaces, match buyers and sellers of components, commodities and household bric-à-brac.

Howard Rheingold made this connection years ago.

The Economists also make the WiFi connection:

Such hotspots allow laptop-toting customers to check their e-mail and read the news as they sip their lattes. But history provides a cautionary tale for those hotspot operators that charge for access. Coffee-houses used to charge for coffee, but gave away access to reading materials. Many coffee-shops are now following the same model, which could undermine the prospects for fee-based hotspots. Information, both in the 17th century and today, wants to be free—and coffee-drinking customers, it seems, expect it to be.

(via Dave Winer, via Instapundit)

Comments

[Unseelie]

I'll have to see if I can find the link again, but I've seen at least one study that seemed to indicate that the costs of maintaining a fee structure for wi-fi hotspots exceeded the cost of the wi-fi itself... ie. you lose money by charging.