" No doubt there was some time-wasting in coffee houses, as their critics claimed. But coffee houses also provided a lively intellectual and social environment in which people could meet and ideas could collide in unexpected ways, producing a stream of innovations that shaped the modern world. On balance, the introduction of coffee houses did far more good than harm, which should give those concerned about the time-wasting potential of Internet-based social platforms pause for thought. What new ideas and unexpected connections might be brewing in Twitter’s global coffeehouse? "

― Tom Standage , Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years