網絡時代的咖啡館情結

Café complex in the Internet age
By Lin Fen
http://www.nbweekly.com/Print/Article/7400_0.shtml

Loneliness makes people long for the unloneliness in form. Cafés and the internet happen to provide us with the unloneliness in form. Apprehensions cause people to establish a bottom line for their demands for privacy. In cafés, we sit next to each other; while on the Internet, we have different IDs. Consequently, cafés, the private space inlaid in public space, appear to be more charming and attractive than pure private space.

In an age where friends are able to learn about every move you make via Internet, by indulging yourself in cafés, you seem to have labeled yourself as the legacy from pre-electronic age.

In the fascinating and confusing place, you are likely to encounter three types of people: firstly, the Only-socializing kind. For them, cafés are only a public place where they can meet friends. And this public place they need could be cafés, movie theatres, restaurants, or Facebook or Second Life.

Another type is the Convenience-comes-foremost kind. They go to cafés for a convenient short break. Wisteria Hut isn’t any different from Starbucks. For this kind, they can buy high quality coffee beans and brew aromatic coffee for themselves at home.

The third kind is those who are obsessed with cafés. They love to meet their friends or take a break there. They also often come alone reading or writing. It seems that there is some kind of magic spreading in the air in the coffee houses. These people have a dedicate taste on coffee; they are picky about the tables and chairs, and the table ware; they are picky about the music, the color of the paint on the wall; even picky about a total stranger under the eaves. In other peoples’ impression, they are those petty bourgeois who don’t want to spend 800,000 HKD on a house, but who’d rather pay 80 HKD for a taste of bitterness.

Personally, I’m not obsessed with coffee, but now and then an upsurge of longing for coffee aroma would emerge in my blood. Therefore, I’m labeled as the third kind by my friends.

Among a number of different styles of cafés, those located in the airport don’t have the classy taste, but it’s where I can write most efficiently. Seeing those passengers drifting from place to place like I do, I have a strong sense of sympathy, which makes me feel calm and settled. What makes me so infatuated with such space?

Is it the legend depicted by Habermas? In the 18th century’s Europe, inequality of social status between people retreated in the space of salons, cafés and tea houses. Rational reasoning was the basis for discussions. That so-called ‘public space for bourgeois’ became a place where citizens could participate in political affairs, and a transitional region between public authorities and individuals’ personal territory. The scent of the ink and the disagreements among people led to establishment of literary and artistic, then political, common territory.

However, in Habermas’ portrait, democracy bred in this space wasn’t able to avoid the destiny of its deterioration during the age of mass media: rationality was buried by profits; criticism was replaced by consumerism. During the television age, the liveliness in cafés lost its missionary rosiness it had several centuries earlier. It simply became a commodity.

Up till the electronic age, people in cafés just take their own spots and mind their own businesses, or just chat with friends via Internet. This public space seems to be in harmony with the early legend, but they are at variance, not to mention the possibility that everyone entering the room has the ambition that this very cup of coffee may bear some connections with an enormous institutional transformation in the future. That only exists in fantasies.

In this case, what does this space mean to individuals in this Internet age? Are coffee aroma and the convenience for meeting friends enough to maintain the loyalty of the third kind of people? What is the individuals’ psychological basis for this café culture that has lasted for centuries?

First of all, it’s the sense of privacy hiding in public space. Many of our behaviors can be attributed to two basis sentiments—loneliness and apprehension. Loneliness makes people long for the unloneliness in form. Cafés and the internet happen to provide us with the unloneliness in form. Apprehensions cause people to establish a bottom line for their demands for privacy. In cafés, we sit next to each other; while on the Internet, we have different IDs.

More importantly, in here, it’s possible that the boundary between public and private space can be pushed back and forth. You may see familiar strangers in a coffee house, just like I suddenly catch sight of half of a face with a déjà vu experience—it’s a playwright known as the wizard. I have read his writing, but never met him in person. Similarly, a unfamiliar ID may pop onto your computer screen and makes your thoughts wonder, but you still have the liberty to respond to it or not.

That kind of quick change in boundary makes the private space inlaid in public space more attractive and charm than pure private space. And this charm is rooted in the potential tension of one’s self-awareness. There are two parts of individuals’ self-awareness. One is the awareness of ‘who am I’, which focuses on the self in private space; the other is the awareness of ‘who should I be’ in other people’s perceptions, which concerns the self in public space. In self-awareness, the self and the alter ego don’t only co-exist, they might be conflicting with each other sometimes, which leads to our dependence on the space where the self and the alter ego can be tolerated, such as cafés and the Internet. It also influence the way we behave within that space.

Surely, the prerequisite for the charm is that the alteration between public and private space is not compelled by force. Therefore, either in cafés or on the Internet, individuals’ behaviors should be constrained by relevant law and regulations. Leisure centers are another example of voluntary alteration between public and private space. In there, a group of men and women, old or young, are dressed in pajamas in the same style and are arranged into the same look. In this kind of space, private space is publicized. The discrepancies in wealth, sex and skin color are simplified into the difference between blue color and red color. Maybe just because the external discrepancies are artificially eliminated, this place can truly become a space for leisure and relaxation.

To be concise, this psychological basis underlines the café complex; it also constructs the psychological basis of the Internet-oriented people. Convenient and fast technology can move real public space into a virtual world, and is able to reduce the rosy café culture into bare consumerism. However, what technology hasn’t changed, or what it’s unable to change, is the balance between the self and the alter ego hidden in every moment of daily life; is the non-stoppable tangling between public and private space in different forms; is the confrontation between individuals and the masses in every revolutionary age.

It’s true during the modernization process; it’s true during the globalization proceedings. It’s true for each individual; it’s true for every nation.