Living as we do, in the back of beyond, what most people consider “shopping” is more than an hour away. So if I can’t get it locally, I find what we want online, and let it arrive via a Big Brown Truck which is coming to town anyway. There’s the key to a vast energy saving solution.
Bring back delivery.
When you look at how many things used to be delivered, you realize just how much companies have outsourced what used to be a part of their service. Instead of one truck from each store going around, dropping off the milk, the produce, all the myriad things we need every day, the stores have persuaded us, all of us, thousands of us, to get in our cars and go out and get it.
They did it by cutting their price by a little, and persuading us the bargain was worth it. But is it? We’re not paying delivery fees, but then again, we are. In more gas, more rubber worn from our tires, more time taken from our busy days to go to the store, drive around to a parking spot, drag our stuff back to our cars and drive them home again. We’ve become such reflexive bargain hunters we’ve lost sight of our own bottom line.
A while back I helped keep Wal-Mart out of our little town. As I researched Wal-Mart, I discovered how deeply they have committed to this delivery outsourcing concept. They open a store with lowered prices to drive all the competition under. Ah, the rejoicing. Such low prices! Once all other stores are ground under, they raise the prices, because where are you going to go? Less rejoicing, but at least we have all this selection! When that has gone on for a while, the third stage is to close the store, forcing everyone to drive further away to reach another Wal-Mart. Too late, Wal-Mart reappraisal begins. But where are you going to go?
In a ruthless, capitalistic, sold-my-soul-to-the-company-store sort of way, it’s brilliant.
It’s not just Wal-Mart. It’s the very Big Box concept. Any purchase, from home entertainment to lumber, big things to little things, becomes An Expedition. You are driving more miles to a huge place and waiting in long lines just to buy a screw. And boy, are you.
To quote a favorite movie, Galaxy Quest, “By Grabthar’s hammer, what a savings.”
Segments of our society, mired in the Wal-Mart concept of “low prices,” has lost a vital part of the math involved in not just acquisition, but also satisfaction. A few years ago, I needed something to lug around all my Daily Stuff, from a laptop to a cell phone. I could have looked for a bargain by driving around to a dozen stores, trying to find something I’d like and settling for something that wasn’t quite right, then getting exasperated a few months later and repeating the search, hoping they were now stocking something that would work better for me. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Instead, I went to Build a Bag on the Timbuk2 website. I customized a bag, from colors to handles to accessories. It’s made in San Francisco, by people who make a living doing artisan labor, and they made me a bag just the way I wanted it. Now I have a sturdy, well made object that will serve me for years to come, and is so obviously useful two friends have gotten their own custom bag. A bargain? Yes, indeed.
The equations have changed. Carbon footprint is going to be the new cost multiplier in the way we shop. The whole economic structure will be shaken up as countless spreadsheets burn through the shortest distance between two points. And that is simply: the right goods-the right people. There won’t be money or energy left over to make things people will wind up not wanting. The middleman must fall.
Our circumstances, so unusual in the modern world, have paradoxically made us much more aware of the cost/benefit tradeoff. Between taking us to where the goods are, and bringing certain goods to where we are. Those big buildings, full of a buyers best guess of what people might want, all heated and cooled and lighted and staffed and populated with people who all drive cars to get there; obsolete.
When it comes to Internet shopping, this is only the guns of April, 1775. The real revolution is yet to come. The end of actual stores, and the beginning of virtual ones. The fall of the Big Box, and the rise of Vast Choice.
In the back of beyond, far from where you might find the cutting edge, I have already made the leap. Into the future of shopping.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Reality Handling: Under Siege
Remember your T S Eliot:
Our brains filter reality through narrative and story. That's the point of myths; they are stories that help us understand. The difference is that myths are to inspire and cohere, they are a standard we are to strive towards and use as cautionary examples.
They are not meant to substitute reality; they are meant to illuminate it.
Our brain evolved for thousands of years with some immutable touchstones regarding our senses. If you saw it, if you heard it, it was there.
And that is no longer true.
Once, there were portals separating the myths from your life; you'd go to the big stone amphitheatre, the big tent in the muddy field, the big vaudeville or movie house. You'd leave here and go there. Then you'd come back from the there into the here, hopefully with lessons learned.
The portals have broken down. The television in your living room brought movies and television shows and news and video games into our lives without seams, without doorways, without a pause to recognize what we are leaving and where we are going. There aren't any simple obvious markers to what your brain believes. Now, it needs help.
And it's not getting it.
Television is delibrately blurring the line. It used to be the the "shows" had some markers; you watched a comedy, you watched the news, and there was some definition between them. Not anymore. The television is a constant flood of "mockumentaries" and "reality shows" and "photo ops." The shows are like the soaps and that's the news.
I think our current media is deliberately cultivating this gap, this "reality gap" in their audience. It's not just that they are heartless shills that go where the money is. They want a confused audience that believes what they are told. The more they cultivate the suckers, the more impact their commercials will have.
People already think a pill can make them lose weight, that an infomercial gadget will get them to cook, and that terrorists attacks are more to be feared than their lack of health insurance.
They would rather believe that, than actually change their eating habits, change their cooking habits, or realize the depth of the chasm that might loom before them.
And it works because so many people have become helpless to distinguish between cunning artifice and actual reality.
We laugh, now, looking back at Orson Welles's production of War of the Worlds on the radio. All those people streaming out of their homes, fearing the alien invasion.
But we shouldn't laugh. It was a warning.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Our brains filter reality through narrative and story. That's the point of myths; they are stories that help us understand. The difference is that myths are to inspire and cohere, they are a standard we are to strive towards and use as cautionary examples.
They are not meant to substitute reality; they are meant to illuminate it.
Our brain evolved for thousands of years with some immutable touchstones regarding our senses. If you saw it, if you heard it, it was there.
And that is no longer true.
Once, there were portals separating the myths from your life; you'd go to the big stone amphitheatre, the big tent in the muddy field, the big vaudeville or movie house. You'd leave here and go there. Then you'd come back from the there into the here, hopefully with lessons learned.
The portals have broken down. The television in your living room brought movies and television shows and news and video games into our lives without seams, without doorways, without a pause to recognize what we are leaving and where we are going. There aren't any simple obvious markers to what your brain believes. Now, it needs help.
And it's not getting it.
Television is delibrately blurring the line. It used to be the the "shows" had some markers; you watched a comedy, you watched the news, and there was some definition between them. Not anymore. The television is a constant flood of "mockumentaries" and "reality shows" and "photo ops." The shows are like the soaps and that's the news.
I think our current media is deliberately cultivating this gap, this "reality gap" in their audience. It's not just that they are heartless shills that go where the money is. They want a confused audience that believes what they are told. The more they cultivate the suckers, the more impact their commercials will have.
People already think a pill can make them lose weight, that an infomercial gadget will get them to cook, and that terrorists attacks are more to be feared than their lack of health insurance.
They would rather believe that, than actually change their eating habits, change their cooking habits, or realize the depth of the chasm that might loom before them.
And it works because so many people have become helpless to distinguish between cunning artifice and actual reality.
We laugh, now, looking back at Orson Welles's production of War of the Worlds on the radio. All those people streaming out of their homes, fearing the alien invasion.
But we shouldn't laugh. It was a warning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)