The Information Age of early European Cafe

In the 21 century, mankind entered the era of information. If you want to know today's international news, entertainment gossip, stock market, bank exchange rate, product price, if you want to know the background strength of a company or the development trend of a cutting-edge discipline. Your first choice is to surf the Internet! The developed Internet technology has fundamentally changed the information channel and transmission speed of human life. However, if this kind of question had been asked more than 300 years ago, the answer would have been another: go to a coffee shop!

There, for the price of a cup of coffee, you can hear through the grapevine, detect political rumors, smell business, joke about romantic gossip, and participate in political debates, scientific discussions and artistic disputes. In the middle of the 17th century, cafe culture swept across Europe, just like today's Internet tide. Especially in the absence of newspapers, cafes are the media, newsletters, forums and information repositories in Europe, and the exchange center for all kinds of information.

Later, the water overflowed, and the lobbies and terraces of the cafe could no longer meet the needs of the spread of news, so the newspaper industry in Europe was born. Almost all the first newspapers in Europe, whether in Austria, Italy, France, Germany and Europe, were born in cafes. Cafes used to be like the Internet, transmitting a great amount of information around the world every day. This kind of transmission is not only limited to the fields of science, economy, literature and life, but also determines its folk, free and democratic characteristics because of its "unofficial characteristics". It is a potential "political discussion garden". Many political storms of dynastic change have been set off from unimpressive-looking cafes. It is said that coffee was found to be a "politically inflammatory drink" as far back as 1511.

At that time, in the holy city of Mecca, people gathered in cafes to spread the news, complain, discuss current politics, and even sharply satirize the rulers. Later, as these popular opinions reached the governor of Mecca through his eyes and ears, he, in a rage, ordered the closure of all the cafes in Mecca. Although the coffee shop information age is over, the Internet, as a modern coffee shop, inherits the free will of the traditional coffee shop culture, and its information spreads much faster than the coffee shop. Even so, the Internet can't replace cafes, and surfers sitting at home or in the office, even with headphones, microphones and cameras, can't make up for a huge deficiency: they can't smell the human smell of chatters. nor the bitter smell of black coffee. As a result, smart businessmen are scrambling to set up "coffee Internet cafes". Whether it is the popular Starbucks coffee chain in the United States or many new cafes in Europe, they have prepared advanced WIFI wireless Internet equipment for their guests to really put the Internet into the cafe.

The entry of the Internet into the cafe not only urges the traditional generation to keep pace with the times, but also attracts children in the information age.