Turning brick-and-mortar predictions upside-down |
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Turning brick-and-mortar predictions upside-down
Some 20 years ago, technologists with their heads in the clouds began predicting that the advent of the World Wide Web would mean the end of shopping malls, schools and universities, phone companies and even workplaces. The theory was that we’d all be doing everything online. No need for human interaction of any kind. Or very little, anyway.
So it’s ironic that today the same World Wide Web is lighting up with rumors that Amazon.com will open a retail store in Seattle. Amazon – the company born on, by and of the Web. The company blamed for killing bookstores, crippling movie and music producers, and infuriating big retailers, including Target.
The rumor – unattributed -- first appeared on the blog Good e-Reader and got picked up by tech blogs and mainstream newspapers around the country.
The notion, according to the blog post, is that Amazon would open a "test" store in Seattle sometime in the next few months to see if the concept is profitable:
“They intend on going with the small boutique route with the main emphasis on books from their growing line of Amazon Exclusives and selling their e-readers and tablets,” the blog said, citing the oft-used phrase “Amazon sources close to the situation.”
Who knows if it’s true; one downside of our information age is that worthless, baseless rumors often get taken as fact. This particular rumor is a little confounding: Would you drive to a store to pick up a Kindle Fire tablet after having it drummed into your head that it’s cheaper and more convenient to just order one online? On the other hand, head to an Apple store on any given day and you might have to shoulder your way through a crowd of people test-driving the latest Apple laptop or other gadget.
Either way, while we wait for Amazon, the ultimate e-tailer, to make a concrete move, we could start dreaming about the future, much as those tech predictors did in the mid-1990s. Only this time, we can imagine online colleges building majestic new campuses and entire shopping malls popping up to house stores like Zappos.com.
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