Summary: The Influence Of Mobile Communication Technology In Cafes

Unlike the US, France has a rich gastronomic history. France was the birthplace of what we now call the restaurant and has largely gastronomic traditions across the world (Flandrin 472). French cuisine historically has had incredible influence and extended even beyond Europe in the 18th century, and French cuisine cookbooks have been recorded to have been translated into English as early as 1653 (Flandrin 366). The French style of dining, in its classic form, emerged between the sixteenth and eighteenth century, and dining room become incorporated in aristocratic households in the early eighteenth century (Flandrin 368, 371).
Similar to the emergence of the dining room and the birthplace of the restaurant, eating practices across the globe are continuously evolving.

Cafes were traditionally spaces that provided opportunities to engage in communication with others in a slightly more informal social setting than restaurants. In Paris, cafes have played integral role in the formation of artistic, social, and cultural, values and norms in France (Kleinmann 202). In American cafes today, mobile device and computer usage is common while in France there is more limited use of mobile technologies. Kleinmann performed a comparative ethnographic study of mobile communication technology use in cafés in France and the United States and found that the diffusion of mobile communication technologies has does not appear to be transforming individuals interpersonal or mediated experience in cafes in Paris. However, in American café’s customers are typically observed sitting alone using laptop computers or other communication technologies (Kleinmann 206). Klienmann theorizes that mobile and communication technologies may be “facilitating an absent presence” and may consequently affect social and interpersonal relations (Kleinmann