McKinley's Amazon

摘要

The internet is considered to have revolutionized our lives and the future is predicted to be even more revolutionary. I would like to place one aspect of modern technology—ecommerce—within an historical perspective. I examine the Sears mail-order catalog from 1897 and compare their products and services with those ecommerce pioneer Amazon.com. Amazon benefits from faster communications and transportation, but in terms of remote commerce it continues a venerable tradition, demonstrating that the internet offers few new capabilities for remote commerce that did not already exist a century ago.