THE children are in bed and I can reclaim the family computer. Shut down Minecraft, Facebook and YouTube and get on with some work.

The good thing about working from home is that you can work when you want to.

The drawback is that you don’t get to mix and chat with others – ‘networking’ as it’s called today.

So when I stumbled across a series of radio programmes last week (when I should have been hard at work…) tracing the history of networking, it struck a chord.

The presenter traced the history of networking back to the coffee houses in London in the 17th century.

Coffee arrived in Europe from Persia and the only place to drink it was in a coffee house. Salisbury may seem to have a lot of coffee shops today but in 1739 there were 551 in London alone!

It wasn’t just the coffee that people went for; it was the mix of people, the spontaneous conversations that would emerge between strangers.

Coffee houses were great levellers – for the price of a cup of coffee you were equal.

You could listen, you could hold the floor. They were places of political debate and dissension. Places where people met to do business, to relax, to pass the time of day, with like-minded friends or with strangers.

Creativity is sparked by sharing half-formed ideas, fostered by debate. Coffee houses became the places where political ideology could be safely challenged, where new ideas and thoughts could emerge.

The exchange of ideas in the thriving Viennese coffee houses in the early 20th century, gave the world psychology, modern music, contemporary architecture and iconic artists such as Klimt and Schiele.

Discussion and debate can also provide some necessary caution. The malpractice in the City that led to the financial collapse, with traders fixing exchange rates to line their own pockets at the expense of their clients, is in part attributable to the fact that traders only ever mixed with each other.

Their views were never challenged or held up to scrutiny.

In some ways, today’s coffee chains are a pale shadow of their forerunners. True, they serve coffee in a variety of ways that would have been undreamt of 300 years ago.

But you’d get pretty short shrift if you leapt out of your seat to challenge the views being expressed by someone on a neighbouring table. It’s easy to find friends who agree with us and confirm what we already think.

It’s much harder – but vital – to spend time with those who can challenge and test us.

Martin Field