Coffee houses are back with a lesson from history

"But what has this addiction to caffeine and comfy sofas done to our society? Has it drawn us together, as the coffee houses of the 18th century once did? Or has it emphasized the isolation of city life that preoccupies sociologists today? It is a question with which Eric Laurier is deeply familiar. Three years ago this social geographer published the first fruits of a £140,000 research project entitled “The Cappuccino Community” which studied the phenomenon of the modern café."
...
“If you only hang out with your own little faction your ideas get weirder and weirder until you do people harm. They knew that in the 18th century,” he says. “Those superbankers blew up so spectacularly precisely because they stopped going to coffee houses.”

Read more...