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"Most corporations have lost nothing by not becoming a force on the Internet three years ago." "There is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to live in New Zealand and work in Silicon Valley. Who knows? Maybe then I’ll show up to work more." IT’S 10 O’CLOCK. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR COW IS? The dog-eat-dog Internet marketplace has already chewed up Pets.com and lots of other e-commerce barkers. But animals are still the focus of quite a few start-up companies. Emerge Interactive has developed SmartCow, a software application that tags and monitors cows as they move from feedlot to consumer. Cell-Loc, a wireless location-services company, is helping pet owners find lost cats and dogs. Then there’s Animals.com, a Web site that will sell you an Aldabra jumbo tortoise for $25,000. For the more budget-conscious shopper, there’s an albino hedgehog ($100) and a small Burmese python ($50). Previous specials: a $6 fire-bellied toad and a Bloodleg tarantula for $110—or $90 a pop if you bought six. MY SO-CALLED VACATION Thinking about getting away from it all on your next vacation? Good luck in this wired, wired world. Andersen Consulting reports that 83% of U.S. workers who took vacations of one week or longer last year stayed in touch with the office via cell phones, laptop computers, or pagers. One-third of the survey's subjects said they weren't thrilled with being connected to the office but "recognize the need to stay in touch" while they're gone. Those who didn't respond to e-mails while they were on the beach or the golf course paid the price: One respondent said he found 300 messages in his in-box when he returned.
THIS ISN’T YOUR YOUNGSTER’S INTERNET Perception: Internet users are young and tech-savvy. Reality: The average Internet user in the U.S. is 41 years old, has 2.8 children, and earns $65,000 a year. What’s more, according to the Gartner Group research firm, the Internet is used equally by men and women, despite the Web’s reputation as a bastion of male geeks. THE PERFECT (IMPERFECT?) STORM The tidal wave of information may be growing even faster than most people realize. Hal Varian, the dean of the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California-Berkeley, says the Internet consists of 2.5 billion relatively accessible documents and is growing by 7.3 million pages a day. When you drill down to the "deep" Web of connected databases, intranet sites, and dynamic pages, there are still some 550 billion documents, he says. E-mail senders are even more prolific. With the average white-collar worker receiving about 40 e-mail messages daily at the office, e-mail now generates about 500 times as much information as Web pages produce each year. "It is clear that we are all drowning in a sea of information," Varian says. "The challenge is to learn to swim in that sea, rather than drown in it." THE WEB IS CLOTHES-ING IN Lots of people have dumped on the idea that gas pumps should have links to the Internet so people can read e-mail while they fill up, but the proprietors of the Wash Club laundry in San Francisco’s Cole Valley neighborhood say people will actually pay quite a bit to stay connected. For patrons washing their sheets or waiting for their dry cleaning, the laundry charges a hefty $1 for every five minutes a person uses a personal computer and high-speed link to the Internet that the laundry installed a year ago. Yet manager Ana Rivera says someone is on the computer during most of the 14 hours the laundry is open each day. "It has turned out to be a very profitable sideline business," says Rivera, who pays $140 a month for the fast digital subscriber line that complements the Wash Club’s copier, fax machine, television set, and video-game console. "This is a neighborhood full of very busy dot-commers, and they need Internet access or their e-mail wherever they go." ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS As technology continues to knock down established ways of doing things, the very notion of right and wrong can be turned askew. Many people think, for instance, that Napster is a technological breakthrough that lets people share information in important new ways. Others say Napster encourages theft, plain and simple. How do we know who is right? How should we think about ethics these days? Context asked David Gill, a professor of applied ethics at North Park University in Chicago and the co-founder of the Institute for Business, Technology, and Ethics (www.ethix.org). CONTEXT: Are there new rules for how we are supposed to protect people’s privacy? DAVID GILL: I’m attracted to some of the ideas put forth by David Brin in The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? He basically says the answer is to try to make it impossible for people to observe us without our knowing they are doing so. People should know what’s happening to them. We should use ourselves and our employees as a test for privacy policies. If we, and the people we have to face every day, are uncomfortable with a practice, we shouldn’t impose it on our customers. We should also do focus groups to discuss our marketing and data-mining policies with the people they affect. CONTEXT: Don’t companies have financial incentives that may not support doing the most ethical thing? GILL: Books such as Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by James Collins and Jerry Porras argue that the best long-term, high- performance companies put core human values on the table along with economic ones, making ethics part of a company’s mission. I agree. We shouldn’t think just about ethics when some problem spins out of control. CONTEXT: What are some of the ethical issues caused by globalization? GILL: I am concerned about a backlash to corporate power. I think the protests that we witnessed in Seattle when the World Trade Organization met there are just the beginning. When corporations project television images of the good life, and masses of the people don’t have access to those images, or when other patterns in modern life are being destroyed, that’s a recipe for social unrest. And the potential for using technology for terrorism is certainly there. People can sabotage communications and business. What we need is moral leadership. Plato and Aristotle said the four cardinal virtues are justice, wisdom, courage, and self-control. I think they’re still right, 2,500 years later. CONTEXT: Is there a positive effect, too, from globalization? GILL: Conducting business requires trust, and fulfillment of agreements, so there’s a sense in which multinational business activity can raise standards around the world. We have unparalleled opportunities to interact with distinctive peoples in other parts of the world. We can share the really good things of the world’s cultures.
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