Many ways to use the cafe

The breakthrough in appreciating the full potential of the virtual cafe comes from the realisation that the cafe can be used in many different ways and for many different purposes. As a conceptual tool is is a polymorph, it can be reconceptualised to suit any number of different situations.

In the book "The Ultimate Game of Strategy", it was explained how the concept of the virtual cafe can be used to organise and control a conventional Industrial Age business environment. Executives can use the concept to visualise the various people within their sphere of responsibility as sitting at various tables in a cafe and through the asynchronous nature of e-mail communications appear to be sitting at each table at the same time.

In effect, this would be like the executive spending all the time in various different meetings with everyone in the company but not having to be physically present at any particular time or place. In this way the cafe can be used to create a virtual world, where time can be distorted in ways that would put any science fiction novel to shame.

Also described in "The Ultimate Game of Strategy" was a way in which the virtual cafe can be used to inspire and guide the writing of books. This saw the author sitting at many different tables in a cafe where different groups of readers were commenting upon the chapters as they were written.

As mentioned in chapter 2, the cafe can also be treated as a conceptual framework, to organise personal interactions with various contacts, peer groups, people with complementary knowledge or skill sets. Communications can be structured and organised in the cafe to be optimally efficient for the purpose of enhancing personal capabilities and effectiveness.

Most people's first reaction to the virtual cafe is to think of it in terms of its bricks and mortar counterpart, where it fulfils the purpose of a social meeting place. This would see the cafe as generating business opportunities through rational discussion, mutual agreement and cooperation between the people in the cafe. But, the way the cafe is used involves moving people from table to table, removing them from the cafe altogether if they aren't contributing to the discussions.

Such behaviour would be frowned upon in a real world cafe, but, in a virtual world, it becomes acceptable because the cafe is not the same as its bricks and mortar counterpart, it is in fact an abstract framework for organising personal Internet communications efficiently. Certainly the cafe can be usefully employed to simulate a a conventional cafe with conventional social protocols, but, there are more subtle and powerful ways in which the cafe can be used.