Coffee & Categories
Great article here in the Economist. More history than opinion, but some interesting stuff on the old "penny universities". What's especially striking is the number of parallels between coffee-houses and life on-line.
As with modern websites, the coffee-houses you went to depended on your interests, for each coffee-house attracted a particular clientele, usually by virtue of its location. Though coffee-houses were also popular in Paris, Venice and Amsterdam, this characteristic was particularly notable in London, where 82 coffee-houses had been set up by 1663, and more than 500 by 1700. Coffee-houses around the Royal Exchange were frequented by businessmen; those around St James's and Westminster by politicians; those near St Paul's Cathedral by clergymen and theologians. Indeed, so closely were some coffee-houses associated with particular topics that the Tatler, a London newspaper founded in 1709, used the names of coffee-houses as subject headings for its articles. Its first issue declared:All accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and Entertainment shall be under the Article of White's Chocolate-house; Poetry, under that of Will's Coffee-house; Learning, under...Grecian; Foreign and Domestick News, you will have from St James's Coffee-house.
What interests me is the idea that while these coffee-houses had roles depending on their location (and who was likely to drink in them), with blogs et al location is obviously not an issue. And yet these communities of interest still emerge. I haven't been doing this blogging malarkey very long but already there are names I recognize, commenting on more names I recognize, commenting on news from familiar sources. A coffee-house of sorts. But there's a visibility issue.
The bricks and mortar of the coffee-house give you some tangible sense that you are joining a community, a confined one at that, and as a result you become aware that you are likely to be influenced (at least) by a number of their opinions.
Blogging and the ether rapidly give you the sense of joining a community, through recognized similar posts, through "oh look they subscribe to that feed too", but they give you very little sense of that community's confines. Despite on one level being a network of people shouting, "me, me, this is what interests me!", the influence which that network has is still there. And whatever the (in my opinion) many advantages of that influence, with it comes confinement and beaten-path thinking.
In the grimness that is management speak, to think outside the box you need to know where the box is. In coffee-house speak, to think outside the box, you need to have a coffee somewhere else now and then. And in blog speak, to think outside the box, you need to disentangle yourself from your network once in while. And that's really hard.