Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.
Via Eric Andersen
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There is one sentence in that long pile of crazy-wrong that I think rings true:
“While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth.”
In my opinion this is 100% correct. The rest of the article was 100% incorrect.
Not sure I agree completely. I think the internet might lure us to surrender our time outside, but not necessarily on earth. And even that… I can now lay in a meadow internetting if I want to.