I share the enthusiasm for the Internet that you trumpet in your main leader and special report (“Back to the Coffee House” and “Bulletins from the Future,” July 9, 2011). As you argue, every liberal should celebrate the shift of the news industry back to the culture of the era preceding the mass media. Most important, the communication now goes both ways rather than one way, as has been the case with newspapers, radio, and television. But it is worth pointing out that the coffee house was only one part of the old conversational culture. The other was the salon. It started its life in Venice a few centuries before it reached its blossoming in Paris at the end of the Eighteenth Century. The coffee house was frequented by the budding bourgeoisie, while the salon was still dominated by the wilting aristocracy. Nonetheless, salons offered much freedom to the revolutionary intelligentsia leading to major social changes throughout Europe. Returning to the Internet era, social networks are indeed like coffee houses of old, but there are plenty of blogs that resemble erstwhile salons. Although such blogs are not closed to the general public, as was originally the case, the best among them are too “boring” to anyone but a select few.