Understanding The Cyber Society

By: David J. Wardell

This week we were treated to the spectacle of senior executives from the computer software industry testifying before the Senate. During the course of the services we listened to professional politicians read prepared statements wherein they proclaimed themselves to be part of the emerging cyber-society because they now use e-mail.

Unfortunately, most people have the same membership credentials and its wholly unclear precisely what the online world of the future will be. More important for our purposes, travel sales in the online world are as foggy as they have ever been.

I personally believe that technology is among the best things that every happened to human society and that more technology is good, not bad. Folks who whine for the "good old days" have no idea what they're talking about. Those "old days" were when people lived in mortal fear of polio season, or going back further when being "fair" really meant that you hadn't been seriously scarred by smallpox, or when people my age were considered positively ancient. Technology has made these and so many other problems become far less a concern of daily life.

Today, however, we worry about the impact The Internet is going to have. At the moment there are a great many exciting and interesting things accessible through The Internet that were never before available. Its unclear, however, whether they will be as exciting a few years from now when today's offerings have gone a little stale and no one has found a way to write the check to keep them current.

As with so many other enterprises, ongoing support costs and effort get lost in short-term enthusiasm. Its for this reason that I personally am not excited about wiring every public school with The Internet. There are clearly some short-term benefits of doing so but it is equally clear that society places a finite limit on the amount of money available to education. Will people in future years be spending resources maintaining an online school infrastructure delivering undefined long-term results while the things that have truly been proven to increase the quality of education (such as smaller classes) are left out? This is just one question the cyber-types haven't answered very well.

In travel, precisely why is it that online self-determination in travel sales and reservations is inevitable? As modern society becomes busier and people have fewer free hours (which is undeniable), why is it that we believe they are determined to spend those hours doing their own travel research, working with booking tools, and making reservations that can easily be given to an expert to handle?

The total number of people who have actually booked travel online is probably between 2 and 3 million--these are the "early adopters." Why is it that we believe there are sufficient like-minded people waiting to become online buyers so that a $9 billion market will emerge within 5 years?

It would be genuinely interesting to see what answers might be forthcoming to these and many other "why" questions surrounding the cyber experience.