CYBER cafes are everywhere. Ever since the first cafe opened in London, 10 years back, one can find cyber cafes anywhere in the world, even in the remotest of places, like Mt Everest where the first cafe opened for business this year.
In Pakistan, these cyber cafes, also known as Net cafes, have been the stimulus to Pakistan’s amazing Net growth. Today there are more than two million Internet users in the country. Offering services at cheap prices, cyber cafes have opened the doors of the cyber world to anyone who wants to avail the opportunity. And like anywhere else in Pakistan, cyber cafes have become a common occurrence in Lahore as well.
Cyber cafes have proved to be a good starting point for many, as people who visit them get the opportunity to learn while at the same time, have first hand experience of operating a computer. Lahore boasts of a variety of cyber cafes. I had the opportunity to visit a number of them.
These varied from upmarket cool places having state of the art machines and comfortable settings, to smoke choked and noise filled holes with only a few PCs set in dubious looking small cubicles. Besides Internet connection, a number of these cyber cafes also provide other services such as printing, scanning, composing and CD-ROM facilities. Some even conduct Internet and other related IT classes.
For those who work up an appetite while cruising the information superhighway, some cafes offer, coffee, tea and softdrink as well as sandwiches and desserts. Internet usage rates vary from as low as Rs10/- per hour (at Walton Road) to Rs40/- per hour (in Defence Hosing Society). Cafes that have been opened at filling stations mostly are not functional.
There is no statistical data available but Net cafes in Lahore can be divided into two main categories: those where users sit with their backs to the wall, and those where they do not.
The importance of these seating arrangements should not be underestimated: having your back to the wall means that nobody else can look over the users’ shoulders to check what they are up to. Not only are all the screens facing the wall, but large partitions between the desks prevent users from taking a sideways peek at their neighbours’ screens.
Simply put, cafe’s often have a laid-back attitude towards whatever the patrons want to do online. It is called privacy. In these cafes it took me sometime to clear away the pornographic pop-ups left by previous users before I could start using the Internet. Exploring the history cache of the computer to see where the previous users have been roaming, even a thick skinned person like me, who has seen a lot of what the world has to offer, was shocked at the contents available.
On the other hand, in cafes where workstations are visible to each other, I met people using the facility meaningfully: students working on their study assignments, girls using search engines, a computer literate mother helping her young daughter to open an e-mail account, a silver surfer firing off e-mail replies typing with one finger and a foreigner making online transactions back home.
The question that comes to mind then is, who goes to those ill-famed cyber cafes, where the partitions are big?
“Lack of computer proficiency, defined purpose of Internet usage, lesser knowledge of English language and need for healthy and creative pursuits leave some of the users roaming around in chat rooms, pornographic or other unproductive sites rather than tapping the true potential that lies in the meaningful use of the rich resource called the Internet,” says sociologist Dr Muhammad Anwar.
It are these users — mostly the youth fraternity — that define the character and unhealthy milieu found in some cafes. I had a word with some of the cafe owners and found out that none were using any kind of blocking or filtering software. I also found that apart from surfing for explicit nudity, some users bring their own CDs and watch them in the privacy of cafes, uninterrupted and unquestioned. Serious users and the female Net fraternity are reluctant to avail the Web services at such places.
In one cafe, located in Super Town I grumbled that the Internet connection was painfully slow. The proprietor brazenly told me that his customers were less interested in connection speed than the fact that it was the cafe where they could surf in total privacy. In response to a query, another cafe owner came up with a cunning argument against the removal of partitions between the workstations: Partitions allow female Internet users to be segregated from men in accordance with our societal customs, and removing them in effect deprives women of their right to use the Internet. I, however, did not see any women using that cafe while I was there for the few hours.
Internet users go to cyber cafes and spend time and money as much as they can afford. Even those who have Net connection at home, go to cafes.
“Those young people from affluent families who have Net connections at home come here for obvious reasons: at home they cannot chat and surf that long and the way they want to,” told Asif Zafar, an engineer who ended up running a cyber cafe in Cavalry Ground.
Muzaffar Khan is a college student who spends all his spare time in a cyber cafe and all his activities revolve around chatting and surfing. And he even does it for free!
“I do not pay in the cafe. Instead, I am a helping hand there. When I am in the cafe, if any of the clients have a problem, I solve that. I had acquired computer operation knowledge after my Matric exams. It will be easier for me when I will have own PC but the problem is that we do not have a telephone connection yet,” he said.
The motto of one artistically furnished cafe, with good machines and emoticons pasted on its walls, in Lahore’s Defence Society reads, “We serve the best coffee.” The owner, Waheed Shahid who is an IT graduate and is preparing to have his cafe nominated for ‘Yahoo search for best cafe of 2004’ said, “It is not technology or beverages that truly distinguish one cyber cafe from another. It is ambience, the type of crowd that show up there.”
“Three years ago, there was a new one springing up on every street. But this business is facing hard times these days and owners are thinking of closing; some have already closed. Reasons: more and more computers are penetrating in households and one can buy Net time for Rs10/- only. We are struggling to stay afloat,” lamented one owner of a busy cafe in Gulberg.
Internet cafes are really a very useful facility, one that we perhaps cannot do without. So many people who cannot afford computers and modems at home depend on them in whatever they happen to be pursuing in life. But how they should be run is what one wishes to see changed. The Internet, beyond chatting, porn and or fun surfing, can be a great leveller for any one.
CYBER cafes are everywhere. Ever since the first cafe opened in London, 10 years back, one can find cyber cafes anywhere in the world, even in the remotest of places, like Mt Everest where the first cafe opened for business this year.
