I was in NYC this week for a series of meetings. One of my meetings took place at this really nice cafe called Cafe Dante in Greenwich Village. Upon arriving at the front door, I was confronted by this sign:

How unusual to see this in today’s world of coffee houses and letting people hang out all day surfing the Web! I surmised that this cafe had ulterior motives:
An attempt to preserve the traditional reason for going to a coffee house which is to talk to someone?
Annoyed at those who stay all day surfing and eating/ordering practically nothing?
Abused as a child by their parents hitting them over the head with a laptop?
I contrast this to what I encountered later that day. I met up with some entrepreneurs who were hanging out at a bar/restaurant called Ditch Plains in the West Village. While the bar was getting crowded and drinks were flowing, you’d expect that we’d be just talking and laughing away; instead, I walked up to two people chatting occasionally but mostly looking down at their laptops and surfing away. I joined in the intermittent chatter and whipped out my Treo and surfed and sent email as much as they did. In the middle the surfing, we’d order more bottles of wine, more food, dessert, and surf some more. It was probably my first experience with the combo drinking/surfing/talking thing.
A world torn between the old and new? To surf or not to surf? That is the question.