At least, it seemed like a great business opportunity back in 1998 when Seinfeld was on. I read somewhere recently that a lot of the most popular Seinfeld episodes would never work today. The situations that the characters found themselves in could be overcome by simply pulling out a smartphone and either calling the other person or looking up the relevant information on their phone's browser.

Which is true.

But back in the old days of wired telephones and computers the size of a kitchen drawer and laptops which weighed as much as dumbbells, there seemed to be a need for people to be able to browse the Interwebz and send e-mails away from the home and office.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the solution; the Internet Kiosk. A place where you could chuck a $2 coin into the slot and have 30 minutes to e-mail to your heart's content.

And for a while, these places probably turned a profit.

Then along came smart phones and gutted their business model like a Seattle fisherman guts fish.

This was probably one of the last survivors of its kind, and admittedly as I'd go through at lunch time I might see two or three people on there, for writing an e-mail of any length on a mobile is verily a pain in a rectal region. Actually so is browsing to be honest. And anything where you need more than a one line answer.

In any case I had planned to shoot this kiosk earlier in the year as an example of a dying breed, complete with "out of service" signs on some of the monitors. Then I noticed that my time had run out and that the hardware had been completely ripped out of there. I therefore grabbed this shot before even that went. Go there now (as I write in late October) and there is nothing but empty floorspace.
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Edit April 2025: Go there now and you'll probably find a pile of rubble or the freshly poured concrete of a new building. The Harbourside Shopping Centre, constructed in 1988 as part of the Darling Harbour refurbishment from a working port to a place of leisure, was torn down at the end of 2023. In its place will rise a huge apartment tower (because of course it will, there is money to be made)... later this year, I think. Building hoardings were still up the last time Google Maps passed by in September 2024, and I haven't been there myself recently to see how close to completion the reconstruction is.

One thing is certain; this place that many millions of people will have passed through over the years? It exists now only in photographs such as this one.