Like the cover of Mac Home, the fantasy of being in the public world is now less related to romance than it is to the world of work. Even while the home work model of domestic space finds a place for women, it does not really break down the traditional distinctions between male and female, public and private. Instead, it renegotiates these distinctions through new metaphors. Whereas early TV represented the private home as a theater, the cyber-cafe signals a different form of engagement for the public. For some of the more utopian among us, this new form of social relation offers liberation.
People can make up identities, occupy new dwellings, reinvent themselves.
Despite this utopian rhetoric, this coffee house has its own gender bias. Coffee signifies mental stimulation as opposed to the TV's image as the plug in drug that pacifies, feminizes, infantilizes the mind and body. Mac, the more female friendly computer, has recently made itself compatible with the Java environment.