Who'd have imagined that the Internet would make it easier to buy things for fast-growing grandchildren?
It is one of the laws of nature that grandparents should spoil their grandchildren. The problem for me was that my grandchildren live in Germany and that when Christmas came around last year I hadn't seen them in about two years.
Now, even though I often act like a five year old, I don't hang around with many of them. I wasn't even sure if Blues Clues was a kind of music. But the net, particularly the gift registry on Amazon.com, helped me pick the right gifts for two boys who are growing and changing so fast that you have to send them three clothing sizes just to keep up.
It isn't just buying gifts, or getting email stuffed with pictures of the boys, while we weren't looking, the net has changed our lives in countless ways, most of which we didn't predict too well.
We thought that middlemen would disappear. Nope. They're more important than ever. We thought that the dot-com, Internet pure-plays would ravage their old economy competition. Nope. Wrong again. The companies doing the best in this Digital Age are the ones that cover all the bases. As Fidelity says, "Call, click, or visit." Business is still business online, though, because people are still people.
Some things have changed, for sure. The net has extended the reach of every business that can afford a connection. That opens up the playing field, increasing opportunity and competition at the same time. Prices and processes have become transparent on the net. And speed, and the expectation of speed, have intensified competition at every level. Some industries and parts of the world have changed more than others.
Travel's different. We got some of that right. Electronic tickets now far outnumber paper tickets. American Airlines just announced that it would tack a charge of $10 on to every paper ticket. We're still flying for the same reasons, the net just lets us make our trips more effective.
Lots of us business travelers use the net to check weather, and local events where we're going. And our loved ones can check online to see if our flight's been delayed, which often turns out to be checking how much it's been delayed. The air traffic system still stinks and it's getting worse, but we can find out more about it now.
Now, no matter where I am, I can get the news if I have access to the net. I can check the Wall Street Journal which even clips stories of interest to me. I check the New York Times, too, and the Wilmington Star-News. The only real problem is remembering that the Star-News doesn't update its site till sometime around noon. I still want news of the world and of Wilmington, the net just helps me get it wherever I am.
There are smaller, less obvious changes. There are now power plugs on some airplanes so you don't have to depend on battery power for the whole flight to Frankfurt, supposing you even thought that was a good idea. And Japan's largest clothing maker is offering a new line of raincoats with special pockets for gadgets.
Apartment complexes have started offering high speed Internet connections as part of the amenities, at least for upscale communities. Some cities, the "most wired" have surged past fifty and sixty and seventy percent of households connected to the net.
Buying a house is still an arduous, important and paper and detail-strewn process. The net has made it easier to find all the possible houses that might match your criteria, but it isn't much help sorting out the options, setting good criteria to begin with, or, even wending your want through the process. Even so, the first fully electronically processed mortgage has now made it into the history books.
In education, we've got almost all the schools wired, but teachers don't have time or resources to work the net into their lessons. That's true even though there are all kinds of educational and lesson plan resources online. We still face the same educational challenges, the net just gives us access to a broader array of resources to help meet those challenges.
We've learned that the web alone isn't good for a lot as an educational tool, even though it can be a great information source. But we've also learned that the classroom and web used in combination by an inspired teacher may be one of the best tools ever. More and more educational resources are available to you even if you don't ever set foot on a campus or visit a single ivy-covered hall.
MIT has embarked on a ten year, $100 million project to create public Web sites that offer, without charge, learning materials used in almost all of its 2000 courses. What the web won't do, though is develop that quality content, or determine how best to deliver it.
If you're picking up a pattern here, you're right. The human things haven't changed much. But the net gives us more ways to do them and do them more effectively.
It's those human things that matter. The Most Beautiful Woman in the World makes the sun shine in my life. I like to buy her things that say "Thank you for putting up with me, thanks for being you." Add to that the fact that she's a beautiful woman, and every beautiful woman should get a gift from Tiffany at some time in her life.
Fortunately, Tiffany has gifts that I can afford. Even more fortunately they have a website that helps search for that gift, without trekking all the way to a store in some far-off city.
And so it was that the blue box showed up under the tree last Christmas. And I got to see the looks of surprise and the tears of happiness that make gift giving worthwhile. The web made it possible, but it wasn't the web. It wasn't even the gift.
It was the person and the relationship, just like it always is.
This feature appeared on April 23, 2001
