As more and more of us work for ourselves, Starbucks is positioned to become the office of the future. The introduction of WiFi and the link to Kinkos is part of their strategy. As I was discussing the role of the coffee house in the FAN economy with my daughter Hope today, I was sudden;ly struck with an aha. This office of the future was in fact the office of the past. In fact the first office was a coffee house - Lloyds of London.
Recall that this was a time when no one had a "job". If you wanted information you left your home and went to the coffee house, as we do in rural Canada today. The syndicates camped out in the booths as they still do. In early days a ship owner would do the rounds of the booths laying off his shipping risk. Then as now coffee houses were where you got the gossip and where you could meet on neutral ground.Coffee houses were the centre of the Information economy of the time.
Here is a Snip
 
"What does Canopius's coffee have to do with * the concept of risk? Simply that a coffee house was the birthplace of Lloyd's of London, which for more than two centuries was the most famous of all insurance company's. *
The second half of the seventeenth century was also an era of burgeoning trade. The Dutch were the predominant commercial power of the time, and England was their main rival. Ships arrived daily from colonies and suppliers around the globe to unload a profusion of products that had once been scarce or unknown luxuries-sugar and spice, coffee and tea, raw cotton and fine porcelain. * Information from remote areas of the world was now of crucial importance to the domestic economy. With the volume of shipping constantly expanding, there was a lively demand for current information with which to estimate sailing times between destinations, weather patterns, and the risks lurking in unfamiliar seas. (Blogging?)
In the absence of mass media, the coffee houses emerged as the primary source of news and rumour. In 1675, Charles II,
suspicious as many rulers are of places where the public trades information, shut the coffee houses down, but the uproar was so great that he had to reverse himself sixteen days later. Samuel Pepys frequented a coffee house to get news of the arrival of ships he was interested in; he deemed the news he received there to be more reliable than what he learned at his job at the Admiralty. (sounds familiar - Blogging?)
The coffee house that Edward Lloyd opened in 1687 near the Thames on Tower Street was a favourite haunt of men from the ships that moored at London's docks. The house was "spacious, well built and inhabited by able tradesmen" according to a contemporary publication. It grew so popular that in 1691 Lloyd moved it to much larger and more luxurious quarters on Lombard Street. Nat Ward, a publican whom Alexander Pope accused of trading vile rhymes for tobacco, reported that the tables in the new house were "very neat and shined with rubbing." A staff of five served tea and sherbet as well as coffee."
1:48:44 PM 
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