Word: maye
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Silicon Valley/Wall Street/media complex believes the commodification of online retailing will lay their company to waste. Amazon the Web's golden child, darling of NASDAQ day traders who raise its market cap even faster than the company bleeds money, is also Amazon the avatar of all that may be ephemeral and fraudulent about the dotcom revolution. Now Bezos has named a date one year hence that will be the time they find out whether they're going to make it or not. A chance, after all those 16-hr. workdays, for the company actually to fail...
...beyond talking about his wealth or whether Amazon will be successful. Instead, he talks about a "nirvana" state of consumer service, in which you'll come to Amazon, and the one thing you've been looking for all your life will be featured on the page that day. You may not even know you've been looking for the thing or that it even exists, but since the site is so familiar with your consumption habits, it knows...
Some of the impact will be more profound. Online auctions may destabilize the notion of a fixed price, leading buyers and sellers in all kinds of transactions to negotiate more over what items should cost. And they are likely to further erode the economic barriers between nations, speeding the way to a single world market. The full effects of eBay's hyperefficient, banish-the-middleman revolution haven't yet been felt, but one thing is clear: the pre-Internet model of buying and selling is going, going...
...watched as it sold for $227. Time was, Hoff says, when you could find eight-track tapes selling for a quarter at thrift shops. "Now everything goes for the highest price anyone in the world is willing to pay for it," she says. Hoff is worried that online auctions may ultimately spell the end of flea markets and thrift shops, and that an important slice of Americana will be lost...
...course, is at the heart of the matter. Surely the Internet could be put to darker purposes. We may not live at the end of history, but we live in a country, and increasingly a world, where the large preoccupations of earlier generations have been resolved. We need no longer worry about subsistence, about food and shelter. For centuries philosophers have contemplated just this moment and wondered what would come next. For a very large number of people, it appears the answer is, eBay comes next...