Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Wish Books to Wish Lists!
The Sears and Roebuck company began as a mail order catalog in 1888. Since at that time people bought must of their goods from the local general store they were required to pay inflated prices. Sears and Roebuck were able to offer lower prices through their mail order catalog which featured farm supplies, toys, sewing machines, cars, houses, and just about anything that a person could need. This business expanded until 1993 when it stopped producing its large catalog. Today it prints fewer and smaller catalogs due to the interest in online shopping.
The Sears and Roebuck catalog and transitions to online shopping is an example of what Dr. Thornburg described as a Rhyme of History. Someone once said that "The future will be like the past, only with cooler toys." Although new technologies are invented, these new technologies allow us to go tasks that we used to do, but easier. One example that Dr. Thornburg used in his Rhymes of History vodcast was social networking. Social networking is a rhyme of history because it brings back the concept of a watering hole. The watering hole was a place in a community used by people to not only gather water, but to also exchange news and stories. Social networking sites hold the same purpose today, they allow people to share news and stories in the digital age.
Online shopping at mega stores such as Amazon.com allow people to accomplish the same task as the Sears and Roebuck catalog did. People can log onto Amazon and browse until their hearts are content. They can read about an endless variety of items, read descriptions as well as reviews from customers. Once a customer finds an item that they are interested in they can either place it in their virtual cart, or my personal favorite place it on your wish list. Placing something on your wish list is the same as turning the corner down on a page that has an item you are interested in.
It isn't that the idea of dream shopping has died with the lack of print catalogs, it is simply the way that people interact with the catalog has changed. Gone is the thrill of receiving the Sears catalog in the mail, instead we receive email updates on family members growing wishlists!
As a side note, according to a Boston Globe article if you are interested in viewing all of the Sears catalog pages since 1896 they can be viewed at ancestry.com
Enjoy ~SJ
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Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI think your example of e-commerce as a rhyme of history is one of the best. The exchange of goods and services dates back to earliest humanity and the electronic version is certaily the same idea. Likewise, the online catalogs retrieve the print-based versions of a bygone era. Relative to Kevin Kelly's idea of codependence, I would say that e-commerce and e-catalogs are dependent upon computer technology as well as the Internet. Moreover, they develop as the computer and Intenet technologies evolve.