The Mobile Society, E-commerce and Everything “E”

Looking at e-culture as an emerging standard way of living

By Michael Beck, Feb. 2007

It used to be that ongoing debates about cyberspace and "e-commerce" suggested the online world would somehow always be dramatically different from life in the analog world. The advent of the early Arpanet/Internet was often characterized as an impersonal and immaterial void.

It is true that as e-commerce continues to mature, the specific aspects of the individual, the business, and the location do become less significant. However, the isolation once associated with working online is no longer an issue. Videoconferencing, business blogs, forums, discussion groups, social networks, and other influences are emerging to “e-socialize” and form new online experience.

Technology is the great equalizer and almost always makes up for any supposed lack. New technology is eventually accepted and becomes an essential part of the fabric of society itself.

Take for instance that the typical person working online used to be in the computer industry or a related technology field…usually maybe working a few days a week hard wired from a home office, and performing the same tasks they would do from an office. Obviously, this is no longer the case.

It no longer matters what the business is, or if you are an employee or self-employed. People are finding there is no need to be in an office complex, or a business park when there is a totally “wired” and increasingly “wireless” world available for the taking.

It seems that every day we are increasingly connected via interactive technologies - mobile phones, email, instant messaging - and these technologies are becoming more and more a part of daily life. Our society is transforming itself where the action of interaction is in itself “mobile” by its nature.

Almost every day a new technical tool or gadget is being introduced to the market --Always smaller, always more useful…and always with more power, more memory, and more interconnectivity to existing devices.

Even as we communicate on our cell phones, whether speaking, text messaging, or sending and receiving email or photos, we are also “e-mobile” in the sense that we can move freely while being in constant communication.

The issues of a mobile society, mobile computing, or other aspects of a ubiquitous “e-network” have often been deemed as sterile and lacking in human interaction; a realm reserved only for savvy geeks, engineers and academics.

Now accessibility to emerging technology has changed the notion that only technical elites or wireless “e-warriors" can conduct business without a fixed base, operating from cell phones, PDAs, laptop computers, and wireless connections with little regard to traditional office essentials.

The online world continues to provide the promise of more freedom -- freedom from office cubicles, freedom from office politics, and freedom from time spent commuting. Just take a look at the latest online office suite from Google for example.

The reality is that “e-everything” is no longer a fad, nor even a trend, but now an important and accepted style of living and doing business both online and offline.