Ejovi Nuwere

There is a dunkin donuts that near my apartment that I’ve been spending a lot of time in. My DSL was disconnected recently because I neglected to pay my telephone bill for three months either because of too much travel or absent mindedness, you be the judge. In the meantime at the dunkin donuts near my apartment I’ve become part of a counterculture. The coffee shop is open 24 hours and has free wifi. You have to get a password from one of the staff. The password never changes but it’s a locked hotspot with that has no association to the cafe name. To connect you have know the network name and a secret password that gets you on. That alone creates a special culture around being connected.

Since its 24 hours a day it attracts a diverse group of people. I’ve had conversations with lawyers, students and carpenters. I see them all the time and we know each other by name. Every once and awhile I will be there until 2-3AM and theirs always others around working too. It’s such a dramatic contrast of starbucks. I’ve never seen a starbucks that is 24 hours. Starbucks also has loud music which discourages you from talking to anyone more then 3 feet away and the tables and seats are always spaced very far from each other or positioned in a way that doesn’t encourage interaction.

Dunkin donuts is very different. After two days I knew the names of everyone who frequented the store. And the employees knew me. Sometimes I go in there just to say hello to my new friends. The dunkin donuts near my apartment has developed a culture that is more like your local bar as opposed to starbucks, which seems to be more modeled after restaurants.

On another note, I’m very disappointed by the number of people who are telling me poor people don’t care about WiFi. I’ve realized recently that these are the same people who probably think the same communities don’t care about broadband. Yes, most people of low income don’t know what WiFi is. Most people of low income don’t even know what broadband is. For all our progress we still have millions of people in the USA who still use 56K modems to dial up to the internet and millions more who could care less about it. But from my conversations, once you explain it to people, especially young people they “get it” and they immediately want it. Problem is the people making the decisions about where broadband investments are made and WiFi gets deployed never bother to have the conversations I have. For most people WiFi in the Bronx or poor communities in America is more of a public relations effort then a true mission. Those that have money for the most part could care less about those who don’t. Unless of course it helps them make more money.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 8th, 2006 at 2:32 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.