In Burlington, the owners of the excellent cafe Muddy Waters have made a conscious decision to not offer wireless internet to their customers--free or otherwise. When I asked Carrie, one of the owners, about this decision, she said that they wanted to foster a more interpersonal environment and not have people sitting at tables in the cafe with their noses stuck in computers all day. This response confused me. If interpersonal interaction is the goal, then why line the walls of the cafe with bookshelves full of books? Why discriminate between digital and analog antisocial behaviors?
An internet cafe in Seattle--arguably the heart of America's digital culture--has recently decided to stop offering its free WiFi service on the weekends for very similar reasons. They want to foster a more communal coffee shop experience. Oh yeah, and they are a little tired of net leeches sitting at tables for 4-6 hours at a time with their laptops and not ordering anything.
It seems that the cafe is run by anarchistically-minded folks who don't want to enforce punitive rules--like "you can't use our wireless connection without making a purchase"--so instead they're trying this. It's a little bit like canceling recess because a couple of the kids can't play nice together, but whatever.
Speaking as a customer of internet cafes, I can say that I go to coffee shops a lot more often than I did before there was WiFi access. I still go there for social outings--sans powerbook--but now I make extra trips to use the WiFi. Assuming others are like me in this regard, I imagine that WiFi can only be beneficial to business. Still, this story sounds like a cautionary tale of what can happen once a large segment of the population is hip to WiFi. But then I remember that when the telephone, television and walkman were invented, they were each decried as harbingers of a totally isolated society. I suspect that this is no different.