Internet café

An Internet cafe or cybercafé is a place where one can use a computer with Internet access for a fee, usually per hour or minute; sometimes one can have unmetered access with a pass for a day or month, etc. It may or may not serve as a regular cafe as well, with food and drinks being served.

The concept and name, Cybercafé, was invented at the beginning of 1994 by Ivan Pope. Commissioned to develop an internet event for an arts weekend at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Pope wrote a proposal outlining the concept of a cafe with internet access from the tables. The event was run over the weekend of March 12-13 1994 during the 'Towards the Aesthetics of the Future' event.

In June 1994, The Binary Cafe, Canada's first Internet cafe, opened in Toronto, Ontario. During the 5th International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEA, in August 1994, an establishment called Comp Café operated in Helsinki, Finland, featuring both internet access and a robotic beer seller.

Inspired partly by the ICA event, a commercial establishment of this type, called Cyberia, was opened on September 1, 1994 in London, England. The first American Internet cafe, creatively named Internet Cafe, opened in early 1995 in the East Village neighborhood of New York City.

Internet cafes are located world-wide, and many people use them when travelling to access webmail and instant messaging services to keep in touch with family and friends. Apart from travellers, in many developing countries Internet cafes are the primary form of Internet access for citizens since a shared access model is more affordable than personal ownership of equipment.

There are also Internet kiosks – Internet access points in public places like public libraries, airport halls, sometimes just for brief use while standing. Many hotels, resorts, and cruise ships offer Internet access for the convenience of their guests; this can take various forms, such as in-room wireless access, or a web browser that uses the in-room television set for its display, or computer(s) that guests can use, either in the lobby or in a business center.

Internet cafes are a natural evolution of the traditional cafe. Cafes started as places for information exchange, and have always been used as places to read the paper, send postcards home, play traditional or electronic games, chat to friends, find out local information. Cafés have also been in the forefront of promoting new technologies.