Hi Dwight E. Karlsen; How to treat the servants, and all those computer illiterate consumers out there...
I think that the reason that the growth in the internet is finally showing signs of flagging is because of the difficulty getting market penetration into the population who is computer illiterate, and like it that way.
Some of my buddies say it will take another operating system to convert the masses. I know that if someone doesn't like to read and write they probably aren't posting messages on SI, for instance.
The first thing they have to get rid of is the keyboard. A lot of people can't type worth a darn, and that mouse really didn't take the pain out. What they need is a computer that seems like a person.
They need something they can talk to. Something that doesn't make them use proper English, or even make a whole hell of a lot of sense, because that is what the general public is like.
But even if the SI interface were completely a video one, where we said things instead of typed them, I don't think it would attract the general public. How many people really enjoy recording messages on answering machines, for instance? What we do here is not going to be of interest to the general public.
One of the reasons people avoid computers is that they don't want to come off like a moron. I know, it hasn't stopped me, but a lot of people are more sensitive. I think the internet needs to get to the level of sophistication where you can turn it on, shout a command on the order of: "Find me some recipes so I can eat all these Zuchinis I've been growing," and then get back what you want, with no extraneous garbage. The interface has to be good enough that it knows what you imply.
In short, we need something like what all those sci-fi movies have, or maybe better, and it is quite some time off in the future.
Of course, when it arrives, there will be no reason for someone buying books to care where his "shopping robot" goes to buy them, so AMZN's brand awareness is unlikely to be important then. The choice of merchant might be programmed into the computer by the people who sold the software. If it did allow the user to choose, it would surely give him pricing and availability from several merchants to select between, along with price and delivery date. But most people would just say, "give me the cheapest," or "I'd like it as soon as possible," and let the machine make the decision.
What I am talking about here are labor saving devices, not new opportunities to learn new and more complicated ways of spending money. I think of it this way: If you were the President, and you asked your staff to bring you a copy of Stock Investing for Geniuses, would you really care where they bought it? I doubt that Clinton does.
This is the kind of level of service that computers and the internet will ultimately provide.
Regarding PCLN. I bid for tickets once, but you know for a fact that if you get the tickets, you could have bought them cheaper, and you can only make one bid per day. So it was a somewhat less than pleasant experience for me, and of course, I didn't get any tickets there. Then a friend told me about cheaptickets.com, and I will probably not try anything else again.
-- Carl |
