Like Quicksilver into the Past

I have seen the Internet future and it’s moving like quicksilver into the past. Have you ever tried to pick up mercury after it forms a bead on the ground? Drop a thermometer sometime. Or do I date myself? It moves too fast, like the Internet’s future.

Imagine a time when you can log online from your child’s toy. How about the day when you can listen to your email in your car as you drive a deserted stretch of New Mexico’s high desert? Picture a future when you can punch a couple of buttons on the television screen attached to the door of your refrigerator to order groceries and a gourmet meal that will be delivered in the next 45 minutes.

But you can probably guess where this is going. The Jetson’s day of the future has already come.

Sega shipped the toy on 9/9/’99. I bought it for my eleven-year-old son that media-saturated day for a cool $199. And I didn’t really click on the word modem when he talked about its features. It sunk in when I read a Sega press release online that explained the company’s agreement with AT&T to offer Internet access from Sega Dreamcast.

Unlimited service, $19.95 per month, and AT&T will send along a keyboard with a three-month commitment. If I’m not mistaken, that means you get Internet access on a $199 platform. Silly me, I originally thought the toy was expensive.
Another chunk of the future comes from Palm Computing’s mobile Palm VII, which gives you access to e-mail and an assortment of 200 web services. And yes, you can access voice e-mail in your car even when you’re in that strange no-radio zone on the high spooky plains of western New Mexico. The Star Trek communicator has nothing on this baby! You’ll get more than the Enterprise: Amazon.com, eBay, weather, stock checking and trading, more than old-fashioned Captain Kirk ever could have imagined.

The refrigerator television is old news. Sweden’s appliance godzilla, Electrolux, has been producing the refrigerator TV for ages, but in October, the company teamed up with another Stockholm monster, Ericsson, one of the world’s leading telecommunications behemoth, to stomp sleekly into the future. Their joint venture is preparing to put wireless communications into household appliances. Sometime in the next twelve months, you’ll be able to visit your appliance showroom and see the TV fridge with Internet access.

Right about that time, Webvan will finally be through its IPO (led by Louis Borders, formerly of Borders - I can do anything - Books). Webvan is the company that will let you make your Internet call for groceries and the gourmet dinner. The company is fairly ambitious. Where most IPOs are looking for a few million to buy some ads and a few small Net-fish, Webvan expects to raise $4 billion with its IPO.

My goodness, we’re thinking big these days. But ya gotta think big if you need a warehouse and a bunch of vans everywhere. Makes his old book stores look downright quaint.

Yes the future’s here. Before I’m dead, we’ll be able to log on to the computers swimming around in our bodies when a commercial comes on, just to see if our cholesterol level has settled down enough to ask Webvan to swing by with Ben and Jerry’s, or whether we need to request more celery instead. Somehow I think that question isn’t going to go away in our quicksilver future.

About the Author

Robert Spiegel, The Shoestring Entrepreneur, is the author of The Complete Guide to Home Business (AMACOM Books) and The Shoestring Entrepreneurs Guide to the Best Home-Based Businesses (St. Martins Press, due Feb. 2000).

:To contact see details below.


spiegelrob@aol.com