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| LIFE IN THE FAST LANE | |
 September 23, 1999 
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(Sound of modem connecting) CLARENCE PAGE: I hear America speeding up, getting faster all the time. Just as the slow steadiness of the horse-and-buggy era gave way to the car and the jetliner, the car and the jet are giving way to something even faster: The Internet. Thanks to the Web, we don't even have to leave the house. COMMERCIAL ACTOR: We're on the Internet. And I'm going to buy the car I want. CLARENCE PAGE: We can work on the Web, say hi to friends on the Web, buy books, C.D.'s, even home appliances on the Web. You may not need to get dressed anymore, but if you do, you can buy clothes on the Web, and a car. COMMERCIAL ACTOR: Hello. Your car's ready. CLARENCE PAGE: Clothing? Cars? To me, the best part of buying a car is shopping for it, looking at it, getting in it, getting a feel for it, taking it for a drive. Now, just think for a minute. If all the places where we used to buy a car are going to be on the Web, then the places where we used to buy a car are going to go out of business. Do we really want that? It's already happening with the bookstores. They're disappearing. First came the superstores. Then came the Web: Amazon.com and others. As a result, hundreds of independent bookstores have gone out of business. Others are hanging on the best they can. Just a few blocks from the White House, a bookstore called Chapters is one of 26 plaintiffs in a suit by the American Booksellers Association against the two big superstore chains, Borders and Barnes & Noble. They allege that the big superstores are getting unfair deals and special treatment from the major publishers. The big stores deny the charge. But either way, the independent bookstore is feeling the squeeze. Across America, the independent bookstore is going the way of the mom-and-pop grocery store, the family-owned drugstore, and movie theaters with balconies. In the next century, some people say everyone will shop on the Web. If so, what places will be left to shop off the Web? We or our children will gain a lot in this new age: Speed, convenience, variety. But what will we lose? I suspect we will lose the personal touch: Someone who knows our name, someone who understands our tastes, someone who appreciates our literary appetite. We will lose browsing. Real browsing requires a real store, a place to feel the merchandise, to thumb through it, to think about it. Browsing offers a break, a mini vacation from the accelerating world outside. True browsing is less about the destination than the meandering journey that gets you there. The Internet has browsers, or so they say. Actually, it is not. If anything, it should be called a searcher, for that is what it does. Media guru Marshall McLuhan didn't live long enough to see today's Internet age, but he anticipated something like it when he predicted discarnate man, a time where people would no longer meet face-to-face. "People do not shape technology," McLuhan wrote. "Technology shapes people." He was right. The mega-mall crowds out downtown. The Web crowds out the mall. The future crowds out the past. What next? Some of us can wait to find out. Americans do not live by speed alone. Slowness also has its virtues. Here, for example, in tiny Takoma Park, Maryland, local residents pride themselves on keeping the chain stores and the malls-- mini and mega-- outside. All of the stores, shops, and restaurants are locally owned. They have names like Mark's Kitchen and Taliano's Pizza and Chuck and Dave's Bookstore, names you've never heard of before unless you lived here. Across America, a few towns like these still try to hang on to what's left of old-style community life: An old town square, farmer's markets, parades, outdoor music in the summertime, a place to slow down. I'm Clarence Page. |
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