🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <MAS.92Oct14080435@mipl8.jpl.nasa.gov> mas@mipl8.jpl.nasa.gov (Marc Sarrel) writes:
>From: mas@mipl8.jpl.nasa.gov (Marc Sarrel)
>Subject: Electronic Cafe in Santa Monica
>Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 15:04:34 GMT
>I heard about this place when it opened several years ago, before I
>lived in SoCal.  Then I forgot about it, but heard it mentioned on the
>radio last night.  Do they actually serve food there, or do they use
>the work "cafe" in a metaphorical sense?  What's the place like?
>What's its premise?
>
>--Marc
>--
>Marc Sarrel			"And they lived ever after, which is about
>Jet Propulsion Laboratory	 all you can expect from a story like this."
>mas@mipl8.jpl.nasa.gov		            --  Fractured Fairy Tales

Electronic Cafe International is probably more a state of
mind than a place, although it really exists and is located
here in Santa Monica.  I don't have the address handy but
the phone is 310/828-8732.

The Electronic Cafe is really the sum total of the things
that Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz do.  They, more
than anyone else I know, actually USE video telephones, fax
and other technology to bring people closer together.  Their
equipment is generally fairly primitive, like the Mitsubishi
and Panasonic still-frame videophones.

During the 84 Olympics they set up five or six cafes in LA
and some in other cities and just let people do their thing
electronically, like talk to each other, sing, play, argue,
etc.  Recently when a group of 17- and 18-year-old film
makers went to Grahamstown, South Africa to do a film, Kit
and Sherrie set up a five-city audio and still video
conference call so that the kids could talk to other film
makers in California as well as their parents.

Every New Years Eve they have a New Years Around the World
event where they get together electronically with their
friends around the world as the year turns over.

They've been doing their thing for a LONG time.  Back in the
seventies they did what I think was a fantastic experiment.
They got a grant and rented a satellite channel for
something like 3 or 4 nights.  They set up a big-screen
display, camera, speaker and mike outside a department store
in Century City and installed a similar setup in Lincoln
Center in NYC.  They didn't particularly publicize it or
anything.  Basically what they had was a window from Century
City onto the NY sidewalk and vice versa.  There were no
signs or people to explain what this was or anything.

People just walked by, looked in, asked the people on the
other end what was going, expressed their astonishment, etc.
It was a real happening.  Remember this was in the
seventies.

BTW, as far as I know, the Cafe here in Santa Monica doesn't
serve much besides coffee.  We invited Kit and Sherrie to
give us a talk here at TTI and I met them here.  I've never
really visited the cafe.

Unlike us techies, they concentrate on what you can do with
video telecommunications, not the medium itself.  As a
result, I suspect they know more about how to really
communicate with video and other technical tools than almost
anybody around.

Randy Cole
Citicorp-TTI