From hungary-online-owner Mon Oct 30 18:38:26 1995 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id SAA29526 for hungary-online-announce-out31415; Mon, 30 Oct 1995 18:38:26 -0800 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id SAA29516; Mon, 30 Oct 1995 18:38:02 -0800 Received: from steve@isys.hu () via =-=-=-=-=-= for hungary-online-announce@hungary.yak.net (29513) Received: from kingzog.isys.hu (KingZog.iSYS.hu [194.24.160.4]) (fnord) by nando (8.6.5/8.6.5) with ESMTP id SAA29508 for ; Mon, 30 Oct 1995 18:37:22 -0800 Received: from [194.24.160.22] (bubba.iSYS.hu [194.24.160.22]) by kingzog.isys.hu (8.7.Beta.11/8.7.Beta.11) with SMTP id DAA22114 for ; Tue, 31 Oct 1995 03:36:40 +0100 (MET) X-Sender: steve@mail.isys.hu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995 03:39:04 +0100 To: hungary-online-announce@hungary.yak.net From: steve@isys.hu (Steven Carlson) Subject: (HOL-A) What killed the coffeehouse? Sender: owner-Hungary-Online-announce@hungary.yak.net Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net What killed the coffeehouse? hungary-online by Steven Carlson Budapest once had a thriving industry of coffeehouses - more than 400 in all. The coffeehouse was more than just a place to drink a coffee. It was a social institution. You went to the coffeehouse to meet your friends, lovers, colleagues and competitors. You went to pick up the latest gossip. In the early part of this century the coffeehouse was an indispensible meeting point. Yet half a century later the coffeehouse culture is extinct. What killed the coffeehouse? One part of the answer is the telephone. In our day, people no longer need to physically meet to exchange information. Every time the telephone rings it brings news, opportunities, friends and also enemies, rumours and bill collectors. The telephone is a window to the world. And the telephone has become so essential that nearly everyone has one, or wants one. In my opinion many will one day consider the online world just as indispensible. All the same I'm willing to bet our most valuable and intimate human contacts will always be face to face and in person. Technology means that I can extend my circle of contacts far beyond my physical presence. Over fax, phone or email I communicate on a scale our grandfathers could never imagine. Yet as these relationships develop there always comes a time when I need to meet these people physically and find out who they really are. That's exactly what I've come to do this week in Bled, Slovenia, at Esther Dyson's East-West High-Tech Forum. The people I've come to meet are Eastern Europe's new breed of Internet entreprenuer. The coffeehouse is dead, but conferences like this now fill part of that old role. The speeches and roundtables are somewhat useful but we all know the real action still takes place to face to face, and usually after hours over a coffee, or something stronger. I and my online peers want to understand the impact of Internet and other new communication technologies. More specifically we want to know what the market wants. What are people willing to pay for? How do we tell them what is possible; and how do we teach them how to use it? Where should we invest our time, energy and capital, and how soon should we expect a return on that investment? I'm sorry to report I haven't found any magic answers at this conference. But I'm pleased that my colleages and I in Eastern Europe are all asking the same questions. What is the future of Internet? Let's return to the early days of the telephone. The telephone began life as a high-tech toy for affluent technology fans. Back then, it wasn't obvious how people would use the phone. One Hungarian entrepreneur, Tividar Puskas, created an innovative service called Hirmondo that delivered news reports, opera, and other information over the telephone line. Subscribers would receive a call at the prearranged hour and the telephone would broadcast the requested service through a speaker. Actually the word is narrowcast. In functionality the Hirmondo service resembled the way targeted information is now delivered over over the Internet. Over time, of course, the market decided the telephone was for people talking to people. But that wasn't clear from the beginning. Just as now it is not clear exactly how Internet will serve us. What is clear - at least to true believers like myself - is that the Internet is revolutionizing how we communicate. And that the consequences of this revolution are still not obvious. The most I can say is that the consequences will be at least as fundamental as those of the telephone. The Internet revolution is already underway. The first stage, which began in the US in 1993, is when journalists discovered the net, began to use it and to popularize it. After all, the art of journalism lies in hunting down information. What's more, the net is also a publishing medium in its own right. As journalists discover the opportunities in online world they do what journalists naturally do. They take the story to the public. The media hype began in Hungary early this year, and according to my colleages the process is well underway in every other country in Eastern Europe. The resulting interest has created a demand for Internet access. Hungary is probably the most sophisticated market in the region. At the Budapest IFABO exhibition earlier this year in Spring people were asking "what is the Internet?" At this month's CompFair the questions were different. What are your prices? How fast is your connection? How do you distinguish yourself from your competitors? The competition is heating up in the market for Internet access. My Eastern European colleagues and I agree we must must build our businesses around putting people and companies online. At present, that's where demand and profits lie. Yet over time competition will increase and drive down prices and margins. In each of our countries the local phone company is also considering entering the market. It's clear that to survive over time in the access market we need to sustain enormous growth and ever-diminishing margins. In only a few years we will find ourselves competing head to head with the telecoms. But as more people get online, as more businesses extend themselves onto the net, a new phenomenon occurs. The Internet becomes a true medium. We begin asking how many people are watching a particular area of the net, and what sort of people are these? The Internet allows us to focus attention much more specifically than other media, and to gather much richer statistics about readers. In media terms, focused attention has commercial value to advertisers and sponsors. Although some of the more heavily trafficked US sites already carry advertising, nobody knows just how quickly that market will develop in Eastern Europe. For now, our content development serves another important goal. The information we presently put online is an orientation point for our online customers. The first question we have to answer once we put someone online is "what is there, and how can I find it?" Eventually I think we'll all stop talking about "going online" and just turn on the computer. Or some other device. The net will be an accepted fact of life, as universal as telephone service. But before that happens the majority of the world still has to find out what Internet is. Even I can't answer that question. I know how I use the net today. But I also see technology taking us much further, toward multimedia websites, Internet phone, videoconferencing and beyond. At each step on this path, the market will determine which techologies will pay, and thus survive. And it will take flexible, entrepreneurial companies to chart this course. Steven Carlson is Net Media Manager at iSYS Hungary, an Internet provider in Budapest, Hungary. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright (c) 1995. Permission granted to redistribute this article in electronic form for non-profit purposes only. My byline and this message must remain intact. Contact me for reprint rights. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- Steven Carlson iSYS Hungary info@isys.hu steve@isys.hu http://www.isys.hu ############# # This message to Hungary-Online-announce@hungary.yak.net # was from steve@isys.hu (Steven Carlson) # # To unsubscribe, # send "unsubscribe" to # For a full subscription (rather than this announcement-only subscription) # mail "subscribe" to # Send mail to for more information, # or to if you need human assistance. #############