The new situation doesn't represent the lack of community suddenly produced by the Internet. That is the hackneyed complaint made, again and again, by people who don't seem to have thought through the unlovely aspects of community- its smug provincialism and punitive conventionalism, its stasis and xenophobia- which was in any case jeopardized and transformed by the advent of modernity two hundred years ago. The simple fact is that sometimes you don't want the quiet conformities induced by community; sometimes you simply want to be alone, yet together with other people at the same time. The old-fashioned cafe provided a way to both share and abandon solitude, a fluid, intermediary experience that humans are always trying to create and perfect. The Internet could have been its fulfillment. But sitting absorbed in your screen world is a whole other story. You are socially and psychologically cut off from your fellow caffeine addicts, but mentally beset by e-mails, commercial pop-ups, and a million temptations that may enchant in the moment- aimed as they are at your specific and immediate interests and desires -but in retrospect are time-wasting ephemera.
