NEXT L.A.: A look at issues, people and ideas helping to shape the emerging metropolis. : Wired Awake in Cyberspace
In the next Los Angeles, your e-mail will hound you wherever you go. You will be wired at home. You will be wired at work. The soothing seclusion that once marked your daily commute will be hopelessly ruptured, courtesy of cellular technology.
And should you try a moment’s escape for a cup of coffee in the local cafe, there you will be confronted again with the infernal, omnipresent access to electronic communication.
Indeed, the prototype of that particularly insidious invention of the information age, the Internet cafe, has just opened in Venice.
The menu at Cyber Java, 28-year-old Rom Agustin’s new postmodern hangout, includes coffee, tea, bagels, biscotti, Pentiums, PowerMacs, 28.8 fax modems and Unix accounts.
Yes, in the next Los Angeles, while you unwind with your double latte, you can chat with any of the 30 million Internet users who happen to be on-line. You can surf through thousands of World Wide Web sites for the latest home shopping opportunities. Check in with a few hundred electronic publications for the latest news.
Best of all, you can read all the e-mail messages that have queued up in your in-box ever since you left to go out for a cup of joe.
Why, Rom, why?
Apparently because we want it. As anxious to be on the bleeding edge of techno-masochism as they are to be on that of anything else, Angelenos are filling Cyber Java’s Internet classes to overflow and waiting in line to pay $7.50 an hour to use its computers.
“Where else are they going to go, Fry’s?” asks Agustin, a recently transplanted Cleveland native.
Actually, what’s surprising is that the city hasn’t already fallen victim to the digital cafe invasion. New York has one. Austin has one. San Francisco has for some time had several (which explains a lot, if you think about it).
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To satisfy the inexplicably consuming drive to be in touch, even on coffee break, Agustin says Cyber Java will soon upgrade to a super-fast T-1 connection to the Net. That means you can multitask with ease. Read your mail while clicking through the Web while downloading risque pictures while scanning in your own home page design while . . .
What’s the matter? Need another cup of coffee?
