Elon University

Archives: Expert Predictions

Will the Information Superhighway be the Death of Retailing?

Interactive shopping won’t revolutionize retailing overnight. It will probably take hold first in niches such as recorded music and software, which can be delivered via digital transmission, and personal computers, which often sell through direct marketing. Anything that is merchandized by TV or catalogue today could be sold interactively tomorrow.

Will the Information Superhighway be the Death of Retailing?

The most radical thing interactive systems could do is whet consumers’ appetites for … customized products and services … Let ordinary shoppers sift through the product information in databases. Give nontechnies access to electronic bulletin boards where people pool their knowledge by candidly discussing their experiences with products. Do that, and watch the mystery and cachet of smoke-and-mirror merchandising evaporate. Products get clearly differentiated by quality, price, and details of delivery, while selling becomes an auction

Will the Information Superhighway be the Death of Retailing?

Interactive shopping is just a high-tech extension of direct marketing, the familiar practice of selling to consumers through such media as catalogues and TV shopping channels instead of stores. Once wires carrying two-way TV signals reach most U.S. households, direct marketers will be able to deliver their pitches on demand, using a rich electronic palette of text, video, and sound. Consumers will gain the power to browse databases filled with everything from movies to videogames to product information, and will also be able to transmit their orders instantly. By promising customers more convenience and merchants greater efficiency, interactivity could revitalize the troubled retailing sector.

Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age

Defining property rights in cyberspace is perhaps the single most urgent and important task for government information policy … The key principle of ownership by the people – private ownership – should govern every deliberation. Government does not own cyberspace, the people do … Ambiguous property rights are an invitation to litigation, channeling energy into courtrooms that serve no customers and create no wealth. From patent to copyright systems for software, to challenges over ownership and use of spectrum, the present system is failing in this simple regard. The source of AmericaÕs historic economic success can, in case after case, be traced to our wisdom in creating and allocating clear, enforceable property rights. The creation and exploration of cyberspace requires that wisdom be recalled and reaffirmed.

Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age

If Washington forces the phone companies and cable operators to develop supplementary and duplicative networks, most other advanced industrial countries will attain cyberspace democracy – via an interactive multimedia open platform – before America does … East Coast broadcasters and Hollywood glitterati will have a new lease on life: If their one-way video empires win new protection, millions of Americans will be deprived of the tools to help build a new interactive multimedia culture. A contrived competition between phone companies and cable operators will not deliver the two-way, multimedia and more civilized telesociety [Mitch] Kapor and [Jerry] Berman sketch … Creating the conditions for universal access to interactive multimedia will require a fundamental rethinking of government policy.

Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age

A near-term national interactive multimedia network is impossible unless regulators permit much greater collaboration between the cable industry and phone companies … Obstructing such collaboration – in the cause of forcing competition between the cable and phone industries – is socially elitist. To the extent that it prevents collaboration between the cable industry and the phone companies, present federal policy actually thwarts the administrationÕs own goals of access and empowerment … Stopping an interactive multimedia network perpetuates control by system owners and operators. When the federal government prohibits the interconnection of conduits, it creates a world of bandwidth scarcity, where the owner of the conduit not only can but must control access to it. Thus the owner of the conduit also shapes the content.