Capitalism is an energetic beast, but an uncommonly obtuse one. It can take an awfully long time to get an idea into its thick head - especially if it has to displace another one. That is one of the reasons why the business world finds cyberspace such a puzzling place.
Business folks see the net as essentially just an exciting new way of doing business. But that is perhaps the least interesting or important thing about the network, which is first and foremost a medium used by hundreds of millions of people to communicate with one another. Although the bit-traffic associated with browsing web pages accounts for the vast majority of the trillions of bytes shipped daily across the world, most people's active engagement with the net is accounted for by sending and receiving email messages. Because these tend to be short, they don't show up in the data-traffic charts but still represent the most significant use of the net for ordinary users. Online shopping is nowhere by comparison.
You'd never guess that from reading the financial press, however, which is obsessed with online economic transactions to the exclusion of almost everything else. But most of the data we have on internet use bears it out. The regular and intensive polling conducted by the Pew Foundation for its project on 'The internet and American Life', for example, shows that whereas 47 per cent of US users send and receive email every day, only a miserly 4 or 5 per cent regularly engage in online banking or shopping.
The Pew researchers have just released the results of their survey of online behaviour over the holiday period. The findings are instructive. 'While most analysts and commentators anxiously charted the daily ups and downs of the online retail sector during this season,' they report, 'the bigger story about the internet during the holidays was a social one. People used email to make their holiday plans; they sent online holiday greetings to loved ones and friends; they used the internet to get ideas on how to celebrate the season; and they sought religious material online.' Well, well. The report goes on to hammer home the message. While 24 per cent of US internet users bought gifts online this Christmas, a whopping 53 per cent (that's more than 51 million people) sent emails to relatives and friends to discuss the holidays or to make plans. Thirty-two per cent (more than 30 million) sent e-greeting cards to loved ones and friends; 24 per cent (more than 22 million) went to the web to get information on crafts and recipes, and to get other ideas for holiday celebrations, while 14 per cent researched religious information and traditions online.
The Pew survey has some interesting ethnic dimensions. The figures suggest, for example, that Hispanics sent far more e-greeting cards than other racial groups. And that African-Americans were much more likely than whites to seek religious information on the web - as were parents with children aged under 18.
'Clearly,' conclude the Pew researchers, 'the online population sees the internet more as a tool for information gathering and communications than for commercial transactions. Our previous studies have shown that the most powerful impacts of the internet in users' lives fall much more into this social realm than the commercial realm. Substantial majorities of online Americans have told us that the internet improves their connection to family and friends, helps them pursue their hobbies, and helps them learn new things and get answers to questions.'
Quite so. This is the underlying reality about the net which explains why those who see it purely as a commercial medium are always likely to get it wrong. Long may they continue to do so.
