I have been using the Web for only two years now. For the first year, if I used it a couple of hours a month, I was really wailing. Today, I am on it for some small period of time just about every day of the week. And while some of it is still E-mail, most of the rest of it is doing things for business, either mine or my employer's.
One of the most natural things that you would expect the web to be used for would be for a company to provide product information. My hardware colleagues have historically collected dozens of thick so called Data Books for semiconductor devices. Each chip that you would build onto a circuit board comes with a several page long Data Sheet, describing just how to use it, what its characteristics are, its specifications, in detail that a software person would never believe. If we software people had to document our programs to the same extent as the chip vendors document their products, we would all still be programming abacuses.
Anyway, now all this information is on the web. My hardware friends do not have to destroy whole forests every year to get their information, they need only dial up the specific chip vendor's web site (Motorola, HP, Intel, whoever) and jump to the specific data sheet that they need, download it maybe, and print it if they really need a hard copy somewhere.
I have been using similar techniques recently in buying stuff for myself. When I was looking for a laptop computer recently (See my December 1997 article in ComputorLink) I hit all the computer manufacturer sites that I was interested in, and then bounced to some nationwide computer hardware distributor sites. These distributor sites generally described the features of the different kinds of hardware better than the manufacturers did, mainly because they, the distributors, just wanted to move some iron, and didn't really care particularly what brand of iron it was, but they wanted you to buy some, whereas the manufacturers wanted you to buy their specific kind of iron and so maybe they left out the odd detail here and there.
The computer trade press has been awash with articles on the problems of using the Web for direct commerce. Mostly, the articles seem worried about privacy concerns, since they seem to think that there are large numbers of bad guys out there with telephone line tapping equipment that are just waiting to capture a credit card number come flying by the phone wires they happen to be monitoring. So, most browsers now have some sort of encryption built into them, so that your credit card and your request for bunny shoes or whatever can be made secure even to the techniques of the NSA or any foreign intelligence agent that would want to know such things.
I have read articles on how all this works, and don't really understand them, it is not my field. The articles that make the most sense to me are the ones that question why you would worry about some hitech group of bad guys grabbing your credit card number from the inconceivably immense traffic in the world wide telephone system, when in fact nobody seems to worry about handing that same credit card to a convicted felon in prison manning a telephone service center for some major business.
A year ago, I did not think that web commerce would be something that I would be participating in. Today, I have used it a handful of times, and by this time next year I expect it to be a quite common thing to do. I noticed this week that there is now a Monthly magazine, named Internet Shopper, on the news stands! There is just too much cash being spent on this technology for it not to end up being a major cash flow tool for businesses over the next few years. And a lot of that money is Micro$oft money, and they seem to know how to make things happen.
I first came across a company suggesting that I buy something over the net when I found this rather neat Map company in England. Some of you will remember that I love collecting maps (See my article in the December 1995 issue of Computorlink), and while there are any number of electronic maps available for the US, I never could find any for Europe. Elstead Maps (www.elstead.co.uk) has them, at least for Great Britain. The problem is, how do you pay for the silly things. They like Sterling, and we have Greenbacks. The answer is, American Express, Visa, or Master Card. For those people who still do not trust the encryption facilities of a browser, they offer something they call the "Two Part Order Form". With this, you send an email that contains what items you are ordering, and the first few numbers of your credit card to one email address, and then send another message with the rest of your credit card information to another address.
A few months ago, I needed a particular piece of software, and after looking through all the usual places for it here in Spokane and coming up empty, decided to order it over the net from one of the software distribution companies. You enter their internet catalog store at some web address, you put the items you want to buy into your "shopping basket", and then you punch up their order forms page when you have found everything you want. This page asks you for your credit card number and shipping location, and then it tells you how much it will cost to ship your items, using the several different options they may have available (UPS Ground, Fed Ex). Once you are satisfied with everything, you punch a button to make the order, and that is all there is. A few hours later you get an email confirming the order and when the stuff will be shipped, and a couple days later the goods show up on your doorstep. During the whole time, you never talk to a person except maybe the mailman.
And now, there is the stock market. Now that I have stood on the corner watching the Dow rise from 2000 to 8000, I have finally been persuaded to start making my fortune. I expect that this experience will be the subject of a future article, presuming I can still afford to have a computer. The point here is you can do it all using the Web.
I have seen ads running on the Sunday news programs proclaiming that you can buy stock over the net for as little as seven bucks a trade. I have a friend that is actually doing this. I am rather conservative about all this, and I never heard of any of these companies, so I decided to stick with somebody I had heard of. My first attempt at doing a trade with them over the phone ended up costing me over a hundred dollars for the privilege. In scanning all the propaganda that they send you every month, I noticed that you could sign up to do all your trades over the web, and that in their case it would not cost more than $35 per trade. I called them up, they gave me a password and activated my account (this actually took three tries before we all got it right), and the next time I had a hot tip I used this method instead.
It is rather scary. When I ordered that piece of software, I figured the worst downside of the transaction would be a) getting the wrong software b) at the wrong price and maybe even c) actually having some underworld geek actually hijack my credit card number. None of those things happened. But when you tap in to buy 100 shares of Blabingales at what you think is $50/share, somewhere in the back of your mind is the question, is the stock code for Blabingales really BLAB, or did I just order 1000 shares of a $500 stock? Not to worry, when you have finished entering all this arcane information (limit prices, what to do with dividend reinvestments, who is your next of kin) the market probably has moved a dozen points, but they give you a screen back letting you confirm what it is you really want to do, in something akin to English, and with the bottom line of how much all this is really going to end up costing you. You still have the option at that point to cancel out, or to complete the transaction.
All of this stuff is done under the aegis of local passwords into their system (so you can't just make up an account number and start trading under somebody else's name), and the browser must support a reasonable degree of encryption, and you get an email back confirming what got done, and it seems like they did it all about right, even if it is rather scary at the time.
Today CNN was talking how the airlines are going to get even heavier into the net. Beyond just displaying flight schedules, they selling tickets over the net. I have already looked into using this method for a trip to Phoenix next month. If the hotel companies and car rental companies follow suit, you will be able to arrange a complete vacation package from the comfort of your laundry room, or where ever your computer is located. I would expect that your local travel agent would not be too thrilled about all this, and it is doubtful if the airline's computer will have a complimentary basket of fruit waiting for you when you get to your Waikiki hotel room.
Another feature that I would expect to be using someday is full on-line banking. Here in Spokane, US Bank has this feature available now. You interface with their system using MS Money, or Quicken, or Quickbooks. If you are a US Bank Customer, writing only 15 checks a month, this only costs you $6/month, plus the cost of checks. Beyond your basic 15 checks, they tag you with an extra forty cents per check. Considering that stamps cost 32 cents, sometimes you need an envelope at eight cents more, and the check itself costs about ten cents, if they do lick the stamp for you and do not have any other hidden charges, this would be quite a good deal. The real question is how does the receiver of this check or wire transfer know that it was for your account such and so. I have two telephone bills, one for home, one for my lake place. How does US West tell the difference? I haven't figured that out yet, but the bank doesn't seem to think it is a problem.
There are probably a lot of commerce activities where guys especially would rather deal with a computer than have to truck on down to the mall, or wait in line (or wait on the phone) for somebody to help them, when all they want is a basket of cumquats or a trip to the Riveria or a small piece of Microsoft stock, where the web could provide a quite natural substitution for what we do now. But I think the day will not be far off when writing a net check will be cheaper than scribbling a real one, sticking it in an envelope, popping a stamp on it, and finally finding a mailbox that is not covered a foot deep in snow to mail it.
I now know that here in Spokane the Spokane Teachers Credit Union has an internet access to your accounts, in which you can write checks, and the bank will do the mailing. There is no charge for this service. The fact that you cannot send back the invoice does not seem to be a problem, as long as you have your account number on the item.