The Internet
The Internet was originally conceived as a distributed, fail-proof network that could connect computers together and be resistant to any one point of failure; the Internet can't be totally destroyed in one event, and if large areas are disabled, the information is easily re-routed. It was created mainly by DARPA; its initial software applications were email and computer file transfer.
It was with the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989 that the Internet really became a global network. Today the Internet has become the ultimate place to accelerate the flow of relevant information and the fastest growing form of media.
Information technology
The relatively recent field of information technology concerns the use of computer-based information systems to convert, store, protect, process, transmit and retrieve information. Technological advances in this field have changed lifestyles around the world and spawned new industries around the personal computer.
Early electronic computers were big, costly, and available only to universities and big corporations. Before the 1990s, most discoveries in information technology were driven by full-time researchers having access to the high priced equipment.
In the 1980s, however, small computers started to become available. A personal computer, or PC, is generally a microcomputer intended to be used by one person at a time, and suitable for general purpose tasks such as word processing, programming, editing or playing a personal computer game, and is usually used to run software not generally written by its user.
Unlike minicomputers, a personal computer is usually owned by the person using it, indicating a low cost of purchase and simplicity of operation. The user of a modern personal computer may have significant knowledge of the operating environment and application programs, but is not necessarily interested in programming nor even able to write programs for the computer.
The term PC was popularized by Apple Computer and soon after many other companies began offering personal computers. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) developed the first open standard personal computer (IBM PC launched in US markets in 1981; the first deliveries to European markets were in 1982 and 1983), which standardized software development. For the first time in history, the general public had personal computers. These computers used similar operating systems that allowed their users to communicate by using the same platform.
Soon after, the general public saw the start of what is now known as the current information technology era: personal computers in homes, using communication devices known as modems, to access information on remote servers. The first incarnation of those were BBS servers, setup by education facilities or even individual people, to store both information and allow discussion with chat and messages.
Internet cafés are a natural evolution of the traditional café. Cafés 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, for example, the car in 1950s California.
As internet access is in increasing demand, many pubs, bars and cafes have terminals, so the distinction between the Internet cafe and normal café is eroded. In some, particularly European countries, the number of pure Internet cafés is decreasing since more and more normal cafés offer the same services. However, there are European countries where the total number of publicly accessible terminals is also decreasing. An example of such a country is Germany. The cause of this development is a combination of complicated regulation, relatively high internet penetration rates, the widespread use of notebooks and PDAs and the relatively high number of WLAN hotspots. Many pubs, bars and cafés in Germany offer WLAN, but no terminals since the Internet café regulations do not apply if no terminal is offered. Additionally, the use of Internet cafés for multiplayer gaming is very difficult in Germany since the Internet cafe regulations and a second type of regulations which was originally established for video arcade centers applies to this kind of Internet cafes. It is, for example, forbidden for people under the age of 18 to enter such an Internet café, although particularly people under 18 are an important group of customers for this type of Internet café.
History
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 (ICA) in London. Pope wrote a proposal outlining the concept of a café with Internet access from the tables. The event was run over the weekend of 12-13 March 1994 during the 'Towards the Aesthetics of the Future' event.
In June 1994, The Binary Cafe, Canada's first Internet café, opened in Toronto, Ontario.
After an initial appearance at the confrence site of the 5th International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEA, in August 1994, an establishment called CompuCafe was established 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,[1] opened on September 1, 1994 in London, England.
The first public, commercial American Internet cafe was conceived and opened by Jeff Anderson in August 1994, at Infomart in Dallas, Texas and was called The High Tech Cafe.[1]
The next Internet café in the USA, called Internet Cafetm, was opened by Arthur Perley in early 1995 in the East Village neighborhood of New York City.
A variation of Internet café called PC bang (similar to LAN gaming center) became extremely popular in South Korea when StarCraft came out in 1997. Although computer and broadband penetration per capita were very high, young people went to PC bangs to play multiplayer games.
