The World’s Last Internet Cafes
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The World’s Last Internet Cafes
https://restofworld.org/2023/internet-cafes/
For a quarter century, internet cafes connected the world. Now they’re vanishing into history.
Same thing with Japan! Some people even live inside cafes. Internet cafes will still have a niche and function to fulfill, even if they aren't the same as what they were originally in the 90s.
Internet cafes will still have a niche and function to fulfill
Absolutely! They're the perfect place to crash after a night of drinking but you've missed the last train and can't go home
Fascinating! Never seen anything like this before.
Do they charge by the minutes spent there + extras or is this a membership thing?
Here in Japan they charge by the hour, with discounts if you prepay for 3, 5, or 8 hours
Here in Wellington, New Zealand, we have a very successful and bustling cyber café called Respawn, which is one of those rare cyber cafés that actually also offers food - and some pretty decent food at that (they're even on Uber Eats!). In addition to PCs, they have all the major consoles, racing rigs and even VR gear too, so there's plenty of reasons to go there since not everyone has the room (or budget) for a racing rig or VR at home. They also host regular events like mechanical keyboard meetups, eSports tournaments and so on. And although all my friends have a decent PC/console, we're now spread all over the country, so whenever we have a get-together, we meet up at cafés like Respawn and have a LAN party like the good ol' days. My friends and I are grateful cafés like this still exist.
Respawn's success shows us that cyber cafés still have a place and can make it work, they just need to diversify and offer reasons for folks to come back.
That's pretty awesome! I think making it a community place is what makes it key, as opposed to just offering a service.
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These are never really going away. So long as business travelers need a place to take a phone call or get decent internet. You're going to have Regus or something like we work continuing.
Airport lounges are good examples of internet cafes that still exist.
I remember travelling and going to Internet cafes at each city to upload pictures back to my server at home. Was like a modern phone booth for a short period.