I'm reading The Search by John Battelle (Wired and National Standard mags). It's subtitle is How Google and It's Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.

The Web has become an alternative media outlet with blogs and ezines, forums like AD, and a wealth of information and disinformation. I seldom buy from a brick-mortar any longer (food and fuel exceptions), and haven't subscribed to a newspaper or magazine for decades (except for trading in FF miles).

This household makes its income exclusively from the Web, although I'm getting the bug to gig around the area and will take onsite tech contracts when available.

So this all has me thinking that the Dot-Com bubble burst was actually a necessary business adjustment to a world that is in highly rapid flux toward something that we cannot see yet. It's like climbing a mountain, being able to see the grand vistas of the plains behind, but the views from the summit are hidden by the mountain itself.

It was a heady rise in the 1990s, where the importance of hardware got eclipsed by the importance of concept. Search engines are primarily conceptual entities with enormous economic impacts, both realized and potential. The successful eBay is primarily a concept, as the hardware enables but isn't the breakthrough success. For example, advances in CPU, storage and networks of the 1980s drove the computing business, but by the mid 1990s, the major players were all suffering (DEC, Sun, IBM, HP) and had little vision for what was to come. Conversely, all sorts of bizarre Dot-Coms were sucking up venture capital like giant Sponge Bobs for about five years, then POP! goes the bubble.

Phew. Sure was a weird time alright. I'm looking at the mountain and nodding my head, realizing that there's only one way to go, then gazing over the plains sometimes with wistful memories of days long gone. So to the debate questions:

What are your visions for tomorrow's world given that the Web has become an established medium of information and commerce?

What socio-economic impacts do you see developing?

Are we missing something (lost something, not realizing dangers or benefits)?

Interesting questions. My own personal experience has been that the Internet is good for two things only. One is fun; the other is buying things. In retrospect, it's pretty amazing to me how much stuff we buy over the computer that we used to buy at the store; everything from old books to organic produce to toothpaste. And yet there are many ways in which I remain old-fashioned. I'm not going to give up my ink-and-paper newspaper.

I see a future in which the Internet provides more and more ways to buy things. However, in order to buy things, somebody has to make them. You have to grow produce; you have to manufacture toothpaste. There are also many services that cannot be done through the computer; you have to go to a dentist to get your teeth cleaned. The Internet will become more and more of a way to cut down on shopping time and travel, but it will never replace "brick-and-mortar" commerce and manufacturing.

I sense two contradictory trends which may arise from this technology. On the one hand, some giant corporations may tend to crush the smaller businesses. Look at Amazon, for example; who needs your local new book store when you can get the book you want delivered to your home so easily? On the other hand, some small businesses may be very well adapted to the Internet, if they join together. For example, I buy a lot of used books from small businesses that I would never have heard of or come in contact with, if there did not exist search engines that allow me to find out who has a copy of the old book I want.

One possibility may be that this technology will be yet another reason for Americans to remain isolated in their homes. This isn't always a bad thing -- my home is my refuge from the world -- but it has obvious dangers.

Hey, Victoria,

I use the Internet for quite a few other things. Let's see, there's research for non-fiction work, poking around for people photos (possible fictional character starts), did some blogging back there as background for fiction, have tried to sell things without any success on various specialty sites, but have had great success with e-Bay sales (if the goods can be procured low, they have demand, and the customer buys higher) or simply dumping my junk as someone else's treasure (this works well).

From the Google book, the author paints a couple of scenarios for the near future: A soon-to-be father gets off the hook with eight-month pregnant wife by finding baby-related Web content that kicks off targeted advertisements, both to the screen and to the Tivo set, and he ends up getting a good deal on a stroller plus a snuggle from wifey. In another scenario, young professional gets a bargain on a bottle of wine by scanning barcode with cell phone, linking Web, getting local information, best price, competing store's location.

The point here is that most traditional forms of advertising are annoying, and putting that sort of thing on the Web isn't smart. A better way to do this is to figure out what any particular individual wants when surfing, and this can be done via the search engine.

Searching = shopping, in many instances. For me, it comes in spurts as income goes up, comes down, goes up, disappears, reappears, laddie-dah. But when I'm a motivated buyer, the advances in Google search have been highly appreciated and not annoying at all. I am looking for xyz product, and by gosh, there it is. I'm shopping!

So, will annoying advertising become obsolete? Oh, please tell me it will happen! Will the field of marketing change as well? No doubt. It ought to become more interesting, with the motivated customer as a subject to help, not a subject to convince. Or fool around with.

Here's an example: I wanted digital recording stuff to produce quality MP3s here at home. Having a fat tech contract at the time, I figured dumping $800-$1,000 would be good. Through search, I found exactly what I needed and at the best prices from reputable ecommerce sites. Not only that, but a little microphone preamp that produces extraordinarily clean signals came through from a targeted ad, and that solved an annoying problem with hiss in the bare digital recorder. The preamp was only $80, but that gives studio-quality clean sound in the recordings.

Total cost of all this stuff came in under my max limit on spending, and it all came with warranties -- all brand new.

Guess the current slang is that the Web before the bubble burst was Web 1.0. Web 2.0 is underway, and it looks like this is going to really shake up business models across the board, especially in marketing.

Meanwhile, search engine spammers are continually trying to get their sites up near the top of hit lists, and Google continually tweaks its search engine to ferret those black hats out. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) therefore takes twists and turns as webmasters try to figure out how to improve the ranking. I've done SEO articles for sites, where keywords had to be repeated so many times in each article. That looks to be a useless exercise, so I don't take those low-paying gigs any longer. What works better are honest, well-researched and well-written articles, and that stuff costs more lucre (just learned this word--it's a fun way to say "$, do-re-mi, dinero, scratch, wampum, loot, long green").

'Tis a good thing, as Martha says.

I don’t see a bust, is any industry a bust because it fails to grow at some rabid rate with infinite returns on any possible investment, it would be nice but I don’t feel its realistic. The internet is still a gold mine, growing and evolving.

What are your visions for tomorrow's world given that the Web has become
an established medium of information and commerce?

hmmm I cannot begin to predict where it will lead economically,
however, I do have an opinion on what the web is doing on a social level.
It's not good, IMO. People are turning to the internet as an
alternative to real-life relationships. It's making people more anti-social.
Also, worst of all, the web is a vehicle for demented and perverted men
to prey upon others. Tonight I saw a disturbing Dateline report on
men who seek out young girls and boys on the internet. It was actually
quite a sting operation, resulting in sheer humiliation of all types of
individuals (even a trusted Rabbi). The people behind the under-cover operation
were from a place called Perverted Justice.com. Anyway, it was almost
laughable (if it wasn't so sad) to see men of all ages and backgrounds trying
to hook up with (what they thought were) young girls and boys, only to find
themselves being interrogated by a reporter from an undercover Dateline
expose.

What socio-economic impacts do you see developing?

I guess the outlook is positive from a consumer point-of-view - competition
creates better prices and that will likely continue. It's too bad we cannot
buy our gasoline on-line from E-Bay.

Are we missing something (lost something, not realizing dangers or benefits)?


I don't want to sound like Ted Kaczynski, but with technological advances
(such as the web) there will be adverse effects. The child pornography epidemic
is a good example of that. The problem is that there is no way to enforce
rules and/or laws that could protect people from such dangers and that's not
a good thing....

doomed_planet,

Good point. Yep, like online casinos take advantage of people with gambling problems, scams take advantage of the gullible (and often not so gullible), financial records get stollen. What would Martha say?

'Tis a crappy situation?

Naw, she'd go bake a cake.

Your example points to the enabling part on the pedophile's side and the enabling part on law enforcement's side. Building a sting operation is now easier and could become automated down the road. But as with spammers, it's a constant vigilance type of enforcement.

Come to think of it, all law enforcement involves constant vigilance. Just passing a law does not change the society. Better economy seems to work though.