A byte at the cybercafe

Poetry, people, coffee, pastries and the Internet - all under one roof. Mark Cole gets a taste of hi-tech society, give or take a few bugs

Next to a refrigerator counter full of wholemeal pastries, a bank of four screens buzzed busily. CB1, Cambridge's wood-panelled, second- hand bookshop and cybercafe, was hosting a poetry reading with a difference. This was to be an evening of "telepoetics", as this tiny store coupled itself technologically with a similar event at the Zebra Crossing Theatre in North Chicago.

It was a brave attempt to combine new technology with old-fashioned aestheticism. This was the first time such an artistic transatlantic link had been forged and, inevitably, there were teething problems. The equipment promised much, but failed to deliver. It could reproduce only grainy monochrome video stills and, as the smudgy image unfurled from top to bottom of the screen, an informal guessing-game sprang up as to what exactly had been transmitted.

Human error played its part too. The audio line was broken twice in Chicago during the event - once when the master of ceremonies dropped the telephone, and later when someone in the theatre building picked up the extension. "Oops, that's kind of a nasty thing," the MC said as a blast of screaming feedback pulsated up and down the line.

The tightly packed audience did not seem to mind. They uncorked bottles of wine bought from the nearby off-licence and rolled cigarettes, chatting animatedly as the organisers struggled to get the show on the road.

Cybercafes, in which you can try out the Internet while sipping a cappuccino, are now established all over North America and Western Europe. There are a dozen in the UK. The first, Cyberia (linked to the Net service provider Easynet), opened in London in September.

There are now Cyberias in Cambridge, Kingston upon Thames and Edinburgh, and the company has plans to open many more in Britain and abroad. They have been joined by other several others, including CB1.

As the poetry evening demonstrated, cybercafes add a vital element - people - to the often lonely business of surfing the Internet. They allow "normal" people to learn about the Internet, and they are also fast becoming the focal points for local cultural events - many host discussion evenings and poetry readings.

On my most recent visit to the Cyberia in central London, I found a clientele that would not have looked out of place in a Hampstead bistro. They had simply swapped their Sunday newspapers for computers, and lounged in twos and threes in front of the screens as World Wide Web pages revealed themselves before them.

In fact, cybercafes seem to attract everyone but the stereotypical computer dweeb. According to Gill Ballard of CB1, the cafe's daytime customers are mostly either students or middle-aged women.

"Many of these women come into the cafe because their son or daughter is at university, sometimes abroad, and they have got their e-mail address," she explains.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the phenomenon of cybercafes is better developed, but they can still vary enormously in terms of style and quality. Cybersmith, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, offers an extensive technological menu that includes Internet access, CD-rom facilities and virtual reality games.

At the Eek.a.geek Internet Cafe in Toronto, there are only two terminals, but the surroundings - lava lamps, Mexican Day of the Dead statuettes, and a notice urging workers to "Fight the Computer: Fold Your Punch Cards" - are intriguing, to say the least.

Ted's Collision, also in Toronto, represents another tendency - the cyber- afterthought. Two tatty terminals are stuck awkwardly among the chairs and tables where people come to watch local bands play.

"The owner doesn't know very much about computers, but he thinks they're really groovy," one of the waiters explains.