Dare to think

My final fear arose, when I attended a seminar of Dr. Craig Barett the CEO of Intel Corp. on his and his companies ideas about the consumer friendly aspects of the net that the future holds. He described in details how shopping tomorrow would become a pleasure wherein if say a woman wanted to shop all she �would need to do is to click "southex.com" for example and the visual of the whole of Southex market would be there infront of her. Then she could click on "Benneton" and enter the shop and immediately a 3D image of the shop would flash on the screen. Then she could actually scroll through all the shelves with the help of the mouse. If she happens to like a skirt and a top, she could click on them and take them to the changing room (again with the help of the mouse). Inside the changing room are kept to figures of a man and a woman. She clicks and the woman and flashes questions about her hair style, figure, shoes etc. She types in 'blunt cut, 36:24:36, 4' high heels etc. and there comes on the screen almost a similar looking creature as her, wearing the skirt and the top she had chosen. Then comes the next question about what she plans to do wearing these clothes and a choice of three situations viz relax, play, party flashes on the screen (thank God for not having more and exciting options). If she happens to choose 'party', the computer screen turns into a 'Discotheque' and she can see the figure dancing on the screen. If she likes it she can press the purchase button and enter her credit card no. and wait at home for a few hours till 'FedEx.' delivers it to her. The situation that I depicted is exactly without any exaggerations the way Dr. Barett demonstrated with the help of his latest software on the huge screens during the seminar. My question is who is he or for that matter Intel to decide what makes life better? Given a choice I and I guess most of us would actually prefer to go to 'Southex market' have some "Chole Bathore" try to enter the shop with an ice cream in hand and pick up a fight on not being allowed entry then finally enter the shop look at things around including smart boys and girls and finally may be come out of the shop empty handed after a lot of bargaining and window shopping. And I argue that this is human friendly. In the west don't people buy costlier products just because they are eco friendly? Would someone please talk about what is human friendly? And I say even if the Intel software makes products a little cheap in the name of humanity, these products should perhaps not be allowed in the markets

This is part of IIPM's AC's thoughts on The Human Unfriendly Internet. Read the full article in his site under thoughts section. That is if you are not yet hit by nausea.