Recently I made the acquaintance of a true coffee expert. I am an avid fan, drinker, and evangelist of the almighty beverage, but this time I was truly amazed. This is the type of person who can just about sniff a coffee bean and tell you from which estate it came, in what area of the world, how well it was roasted, and from which importer it came. Scary.

I'll never be that good, and most gourmet coffee folks'll scoff at my little column here in skew. So it goes. What really spurns me to write this little section is a love of variety and uniqueness. There's always been a subculture surrounding the places where people get coffee and the places that supply the demand.

First, let's review the not so new and unusual. Music is good, if not too loud. I like loud music at concerts and clubs and all, but not while sitting at a table at my favorite hangout. Besides, dancing at most coffee houses is right out. Open mic poetry, and sometimes comedy skits, are always a plus. These are things expected. Chess games, discussions of politics or philosophy, even the guy staring at the wall and humming slightly to himself are not uncommon. Thankfully, I've not run into wide screen TV's and such as you find in many bars. The key thought here is the crowd - it is usually a more introspective group of people, or at least quiet. But I've recently seen a new trend catching at these places.

The new trend is this "cybercafe" thing. On the one hand, I find it intriguing, and on the other, I worry it will make some places lose their character. I have this fear of places with a cozy atmosphere suddenly becoming a computer room. In some ways, it is the natural progression of things. Evolution of media some might say; news by town crier, to news by newspaper, to news by Clarinet. If that's what it is, then it may be the inevitable fate of most places to have keyboards, monitors, and Net connections for rent right next to the newspaper racks.

"A tall cappuccino and a New York Times, please." "Would you like that in paper or PDF?"

One of the more ballyhooed places around is Cybersmith Cafe in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's a cool place, with a zillion dollars of high tech gizmos and toys to make even the heart of the oldest veteran of Silicon Valley palpitate with excitement. The problem is that it is commonly grouped with coffee houses as the "new thing", and this scares me. They are as different as sports bars and tea rooms.

The real issue here is to distinguish places like Cybersmith (a new-fangled video game arcade) from an espresso bar, and hope that never the two shall meet. If you want to read your e-mail and e-news at a coffee house, remember what makes the cafe have that cozy, hang-out atmosphere, and tell me if the computers fit in. If a few computers suddenly pop up in a quiet corner, the additional access to information and "hip" stuff is great. But just as espresso bars need not turn into a newsstand to have your favorite newspapers, we don't need a computer jungle to have some access to e-mail. If suddenly there's VR goggles at every table, I'd starting fighting for that "traditional" thing tooth and nail.