| Article by Brooke Saunders: THE INTERNET JUGGERNAUT IS COMING One thing is certain: unless you have been living in a cave for the past year as a hunter/gatherer, it should be penetrating your consciousness that the Internet is here in a bigger way than you can even imagine. Most likely the business that you own or work for depends on computers to a great degree for various tasks. Accounting, inventory, marketing, creating graphics, and word processing are just a few things computers can do. And that dependence will only increase as time goes by. In the past year, there has been a sharp upturn in the number of purchasing agents that only do business on the web, and business to business commerce is increasing dramatically. Customers will likely require you to take credit cards online, or get details about bids from websites. You still might have to make an in-person site visit, depending on the type of business you do, but learning about the job, research, sending in the bid, and receiving payment will likely happen on the Internet. Are you ready for that? If not, you can bet your competitor is. The Internet seems pretty sophisticated now, but you must understand what is coming, and coming soon. Think of computers and the Internet now as a Model T, we are at that stage of development for the auto industry, or tube radios before the transistor. We're mass- producing hardware and software, but Internet use has not really penetrated world-wide to a fraction of the degree it will, especially when costs go down and speed goes up. It took decades for telephones, radios, and televisions to be widely used, but the Internet expansion is happening almost overnight. Every time someone makes a prediction on how fast people worldwide are connecting to the Internet, their predictions are swamped with numbers far greater than imagined. One in two dollars of purchasing power will travel over the Internet eventually? 80% of households will have some kind of Internet hookup in a few years? Doubling in size every few months? What if the rate of expansion itself speeds up? India alone will probably have 100 million people go online in the next few years. This is happening because of satellite "Internet devices" that instantly put one online, without copper land lines that scarcely exist in the Third World. Lightweight and durable, the user can punch one button, and the address window pops up, ready to surf the Internet, send and receive email, and act as personal organizer. It will be as easy as picking up the phone. Perhaps you don't care about the Internet, and computers are not really a part of your job. Then why should you bother to learn? Competing businesses embracing the Internet might take away market share from your company if it is not paying attention, and as a result, you lose your job. There is a wave of highly trained and technically savvy people who have lived and breathed computers and the Internet since they could crawl, all looking for work. They might want your existing job, or take one you are interested in. If you are older, and learning late, it will take you at least three times longer to accomplish something they might already know, and prospective employers know this. Don't say you weren't warned if a twenty-something with a nose ring takes your job. It's not just the threat of someone physically walking in and getting the plum jobs at your company, it's various online services that can reduce your value to a company. If you are a webpage designer, the company you work for may "outsource" what you do at a discount. For example, there is a company in Brazil that will make fantastic webpages for 1/4 what you can get it done here. So you are not just competing with a fellow employee, you are competing with someone in another country. If you are not learning something about computers and the Internet everyday, somebody else is. What does that bumper sticker say? "If you think education is expensive, try the cost of ignorance." About the Author... Brooke Saunders is a marketing consultant based in Richmond.
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