Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/hold me in your arms/Nexus/nexus.nets/cyber.cafe

Internet Message Format | 1994-04-24 | 7KB

From: [e-mail] (Sparky)
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 1994 09:59:31 -0500
To: Multiple recipients of list <[e-mail]>
Subject: Observer Article: Cyber Cafe (fwd)

    Well looks like other people are thinking along similar lines...
What do you reckon people should I make a preliminary press release? It
might attract sponsers too but then again it might prompt someone else...

-Mark

Dave Anderson said...
>
> Here's an interesting article I read in today's Observer.
> (Apologies for typo's)
>
> Cyberspace
> ----------
> Today a bulletin board, tomorrow espresso on line. Jim McClellan asks Heath
> Bunting about his Cyber Cafe.
>
> An underground artist with anarco-situationist leanings, Heath Bunting has
> doodles around on the borders of legality for the past few years, trying his
> hand at everything from flyposting to running an avante-garde pirate radio
> station in Bristol.
> Six weeks ago, he started up his own computerised bulletin board, called Cyber
> Cafe, which is currently frequented by hackers and anarchists and contains
> files giving advice on writing viruses (an interesting electronic art form,
> according to Heath) But despite a severe crop, when he ambles baggily into the
> Living Room cafe in Soho he doesn't look like a threat to national security. In
> fact, spend half an hour talking to him about Cyber Cafe and you could wind up
> convinced that, far from being hauled in by police, he should perhaps be given
> a government grant.
> His 'old-fashioned' bulletin board runs on the kind of old IBM PC you could
> pick up for 100 or so. Log on and you can dwonload a variety of E-zines or
> Bruce Stirling's collected journalism, or you can post messages to other
> members about upcoming events. There are no programs or graphics, just text. No
> big deal, he admits, but really the board is a gesture, an attempt to raise
> interest in his plan to set up a real-life 24-hour Cyber Cafe, based in Soho,
> which would offer punters round-the-clock free access to the internet (via
> table-top terminals) along with cappucino and espresso.
> 'The idea is to create a focal point for the electronic community in London and
> the UK in general, and generate a kind of critical mass, so things start to
> take off naturally.' Heath explains. And if people spend hours surfing the Net
> for the price of a cup of tea? 'It wouldn't be a problem. The idea is to bring
> the people and the equipment together and see what happens.'
> What he hopes will happen is that Cyber Cafe will develop into a full-blown
> mini-virtual community, offering conferences, real-time chat lines, a network
> art-gallery and information resources. AT the moment he's looking for a
> suitable premises and negotiating funding. 'We've only had the idea for a few
> weeks and already things are happening very quickly. All we have to do is talk
> enough, and it will happen'
> An appropriate attitude, when you think that the virtual communities which
> flourish on the Net are little worlds literally built out of talk. Not all of
> it is empty chatter. As the American psychologist and computer theorist Sherry
> Turkle pointed out recently, 'The notion of virtual community compels
> conversation about the nature of community.' The same goes for virtual reality
> and even virtual sex. But even if, by accident, on-line networks have sparked a
> nascent of informal public debate about the big issues, it's not much use if
> the only people speaking are white male computer science students.
> Heath is one of a number of people engaged in the essential labour od
> broadening the conversation. So while computer types might see him as an arty
> outsider, he could be exactly what the rather insular British on-line scene
> needs. After al, Cix, the UK's best-known virtual community, boasts more
> subscribers than American on-line hangouts like The Well, it has never achieved
> similarly high-profile or cultural influence. The thriving Cyber Cafe might
> fare better.
> Whether it would help raise the level of the political discussion around on-
> line culture is open to question. One of the main topics on Cyber Cafe so far
> has been the rumours that the Government is planning to bring in a licensing
> system for bulletin boards, which would force many smaller operations off-line.
> A knee-jerk reaction on the part of politicians scared (and increasingly
> sidelined) by the power of the networks, Heath suggests. 'The Conservatives
> seem to have only one scale of value - money,' he adds. 'The best way to
> translate the 'wealth' bulletin boards generate into monetary terms is to
> license them, make people pay to start them. It's a shame, because other forms
> of wealth they create - cultural weaalth, for example - will die.'
> But long before any licensing laws are established, Cyber Cafe will, he hopes,
> be buzzing, open for business, and open to all sorts, from hackers to
> housewives. Have Heath's entrepreneurial scemes prompted accusations of a sell-
> out from som of his old associates - the people who requent the anarchist
> bulletin board Fast Breeder, for example? Not really, he says. People from Fast
> Breeder log onto Cyber Cafe, and anyway the distance between the anarchist and
> the entrepreneur is not that great.
> 'Capitalism is continual revolution,' he muses.'As for anarchy...I wouldn't
> want to define it. But if you want to do something you find a way to do it,
> with the least possible threat to yourself and other people. Some people
> do things to react to other things. I prefer to do positive things.'
> In the end his openness and willingness to engage with the business world seems
> likely to have greater social effect than the secretive, vaguely paranoid
> machinations indulged on closed bulletin boards. Even so, as I'm about to
> leave, Heath stops me. 'It might help me raising money if, when you write this,
> you play down the anarchist side and stress the young entrepreneur stuff.'
> Perhaps. But sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. The Cyber Cafe number
> is 071 240 3332
>             copied directly from The Observer Magazine 'Life'
>
> Barber
--
_   /\/|  _   _   /  _  Email:  [e-mail]        IRC: Brandoch
   /   |_( /_/ '_/7     SnailMail: 363 Kings College, Cambridge, England
Mark Cheverton     \_)  Finger: [e-mail] for Battle
     "Time is sufficient to those who utilise it" - Leonardo da Vinci