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Portrait by C. Dey Prescott
D. R. Prescott has written a novel, short stories, a nonfiction book, a collection of essays, a full-length-three-act play, planetarium show/display scripts, two family histories, technical articles and business plans as well as written for and edited several newsletters.
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Recent awards and published work include Writers' Journal, Long Story Short, Taj Mahal Review literary journal, The Orange County Register, Writer's Digest and Writing.com among others.
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Prescott currently writes and explores life in Orange, California.
"Sentience can be annoying."
-DRP Abt. 1990
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My fifth contribution (BENGAY AND PROMISES) to The Taj Mahal Review
Literary Journal December 2010 is available: http://ning.it/ggarW6 ________________________
Don Prescott appears on Episode 7:Colonizing the Cosmos and 8:The God Question of D. Wayne Dworsky's Alpha Centauri & Beyond Blog Talk Radio.
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Available today in most eBook formats from these fine people:
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IS THERE TIME: http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/item/SW00000027236/Prescott-D.-R./Is-There-Time/1.h...
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Kobo Books
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And, COMING SOON at Amazon.com
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O R D E R T O D A Y !
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Storefronts and Other Things Electronic
by D. R. Prescott
As I write this, I am shopping. My kind of shopping is settling in with a cup of coffee, my netbook computer and, perhaps, my Kindle loaded with a good book while my wife happily goes off searching for this or that without me slowing her down or crimping her style. Sitting here is where a blinding glimpse of the obvious struck. Years of observation lead me to suggest that storefronts and malls will be markedly different, and some even non-existent, ten or twenty years from now.
Why? There are two major reasons. First is pervasive technology; second is what impact will children have on tomorrow having been raised in a world radically different from that their parents or grandparents experienced. There are those of us in the boomer age range that might be called the cross-over generation because of our unique position in time between technology-past and technology-future. Our children and their children have been immersed in a technological bath since birth. Never before have generational gaps been so wide.
After World War II, the rise of the military-industrial complex and the demand for consumer goods brought about in part by our increased species’ fertility started a technological revolution that ultimately led to a world today permeated by the Internet, vast television satellite/cable networks and prodigious communication capabilities. The small ma and pa stores came under siege in the late 1940’s and 1950’s by the big department stores and the super-sized, emerging shopping malls as a thing called suburbia began to transform how we work, shop, play and even live. The old adage, “What is this world coming too?” took on new meaning with increasing speed.
Military, business and social interaction has become increasingly dependent on those invisible networks with global reach. Our parents and grandparents were astounded (some stunned to disbelief) by developments taking over our culture. From the first commercial television to the first humans who walked on the Moon, two decades of progress were praised and cursed. Considering that our society today is dramatically different than the past, what lies ahead for shoppers? Let’s do a little prognostication.
I will suggest that in a very few years Moore’s Law (A prediction by Gordon Moore, cofounder of the Intel Corporation, that computing power would double approximately every 18 months.) will make it possible to carry a device with us about the size of a current day Kindle, Sony or Nook eReaders which will have enormous capabilities. They will likely be able to be everything we need for educating, entertaining and supporting ourselves, thanks to the Internet.
However, there can be too much of a good thing for some sectors, especially for brick and mortar storefronts. It has been our experience that stores are carrying less inventory and less variety than they did in their heyday. More and more, we find ourselves going to the Internet to find things unavailable in local stores.
Many things are changing right before our eyes. Print books are losing ground to eBooks on Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader and the like; most retail storefronts operations have growing Internet components; Internet addresses are integral parts of prolific television ads; Tweeting, Facebook and other social interaction sites are prolific and possibly addictive; people, especially youths, are texting with abandon morning, noon and night. Where will it end? Maybe a better question: Where is it going?
It appears to me that retail businesses are both benefitting and threatened by online shopping. Many who recognize the trend toward electronic shopping have sites and offer deals unavailable in their stores. Ma and pa Internet operations are popping up focusing on niche products that are not profitable for mall shops to carry as inventory. As more and more Internet shopping occurs, certain storefronts will have to downsize or convert their operation to online stores and cut out the overhead of high-priced retail space. Some won’t survive because they fail to change quickly enough or resist change altogether. That also suggests that many retail workers will be out of work since most online operations are less labor intensive, further exacerbating the unemployment problem.
I will suggest that the most telling factor may lie with the under-thirty crowd. Bombarded by information 24/7, today’s youth seem to have a different perspective than most of their elders on shopping and just about everything else. You can hardly walk through a mall without seeing people on cell phones or apparently talking to themselves until you realize they have a little device tucked in their ears. Communicating, whether meaningful and necessary or not, appears to have become almost a need rather than a convenience. What would people do with all the down time if cell phones were suddenly to disappear?
Recently, on one of our local news broadcasts, a study reported in a short news segment suggested that the today’s youth are staring at some sort of electronic screen (computer, cell phone, television, etc.) over seven hours per day. How these current and future shoppers interact with their world is different than it was when mobile phoning required stopping by a pay phone alongside the road or, worse, waiting until you got home. That difference is bound to affect how retailers attract shoppers, years from now when the youth become adults.
As technology forges ahead changing how we live and shop, brick and mortar storefronts will surely have to change. Here some examples of change right under our noses:
• It would appear that certain stores, such as clothing, shoe and other retailers where being there in person has some benefit, might be vulnerable to the electronic revolution too. Liberal return-policies and improving technologies such as holography, text-to-speech systems and interactive shopping systems will likely jolt retailers. Buying clothes used to be an up close and personal thing. Now, everything from head to toe is available on line. Here liberal and convenient return-policies are stimulating this growth industry.
• Go to an Albertsons Market or a Home Depot and watch more and more people checking themselves out—more electronics and fewer checkers.
• This Christmas one of the hot items is the eReader; the print book industry is under technological siege. Will students in the next few years be required to have eReaders where all their textbooks are stored on a device that weighs less than a pound?
• The stereotypical library is fast becoming an anachronism in the face of digital information upheaval. Search algorithms are replacing the Dewey Decimal System. Libraries must either radically change or become extinct at the hands of the Internet, another victim of the digital age.
• Restaurants are going digital too but that is one industry that probably has a better chance for surviving as brick and mortar storefronts. While ordering in and having food delivered is convenient, there is something about getting out of the house and having a meal in a pleasant social environment. Evidence of that is easy to see. Sit in a mall most anytime and observe how many people appear to take eating seriously.
How different storefronts will be in the next few decades is in the hands of our youth. I have no idea of the changes coming but I will suggest fastening your seatbelts and hang on; it could be a wild and bumpy ride.
© Copyright 2010 D. R. Prescott (UN: donprescott at Writing.Com).
All rights reserved.
D. R. Prescott has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
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