The CoffeeNet in San Francisco is busiest at lunch time, where the clientele consists of a steady stream of exec's checking stock quotes, along with tourists checking email. Jeremy's, just outside Joshua Tree National Park in northern California provides upscale rock-climbers with craft beer and web browsing. In each instance, differences in material, conceptual, and experiential practices give rise to very different productions of social space. Again, note the importance of social reading. But within cybercafes, it's not the ubiquitous newspaper that maps a lived space of social reading, but rather the familiarity of the computer itself as a point of access to a network of information and potential contact.
Social reading is replaced by social browsing.
In each of these spaces, the computer signifies the potential to connect elsewhere. What we share is our nomadism. In this regard, it might be fair to say that cybercafes are an urban phenomenon. For example, a recent Times article reports on the success of Eva's Cafe, a bar in Belize that has become an important hub for international students and researchers, as well as natives of Belize. For both groups, the cybercafe connects a remote location to a networked urbanism.