Soundbytes: On your marts, get Net, go

The internet is a collection of contradictions. Celebrated for supposedly sweeping aside the restrictions imposed by geography, it continues to prove itself adept at reinforcing certain geographical stereotypes.

For example, where else but California would you expect to find Web site designers committing mass suicide on the appearance of a comet which, six weeks ago, no one outside Jodrell Bank had ever heard of?

Another example: recent research into enthusiasm for the Net in Europe found the Northern Europeans considerably more likely to subscribe than their Latin cousins in the south. Can this have surprised anyone?

And another: a couple of years ago, a world internet conference was due to take place in Singapore, but the authorities there threw it out. One shrewd Singaporean I spoke to said the idea of the internet needing a physical location for a conference was a betrayal of its ideals. Singapore, he said, would not lend itself to such hypocrisy. The real reason, naturally, was the fear that an internet fit for international trade would be bad for business and they didn?t want to encourage it.

Singapore, where carrying the wrong kind of fruit on the underground attracts a heavy fine, is one of the few places in the world you can imagine turning away conference business out of perceived self-interest.

The common factor seems to be that cultural differences survive, despite decades of exposure to the homogenising influence of Coca-Cola, McDonald?s and The Little House on the Prairie. People all over the world may ape Californians in their dress, language, leisure pursuits and vitriolic condemnation of cigarettes, but when they glimpse Hale-Bopp from their back yards they step back, metaphorically, from the brink. It takes a genuine Californian to go the extra mile.

If this cultural assertiveness applies to the UK as well, it could be good news for the commercial potential of the Net. From having been denigrated as a nation of shopkeepers by Napoleon, the British seem to have become a nation of shoppers. As such they will no doubt embrace the Net warmly as presenting an additional shopping opportunity.

What will they buy? The signs so far, if another piece of recent research is to be believed, indicate a thriving cybermarket for computer equipment and software. This, too, is hardly surprising, and for more than one reason.

As Northern Europeans, the British are naturally disposed to enthusiasm for the Net. That indicates enthusiasm for the technology in general. Indeed, many of the internet?s early adherents may have had no other interests, but that?s beside the point.

Then there is the remarkable tendency of computer products to generate demand for more computer products ? an economic phenomenon akin to the workings of a perpetual motion machine. They perform this handy trick by making everyday operations so complicated that periodic injections of more and more sophisticated technology are the only answer. I once had the misfortune to share a bedroom with a pair of caged Russian gerbils; creatures of the night, they rattled round their exercise wheel in the dark for hours as though recreating a long-distance hunt for food. This may be an apt symbol for the Net surfer.

There is one other point to make about the role of the Net as a mart for computer equipment. One or two IT managers have said to me resignedly that computer companies are remarkably good at producing systems that computer firms find useful. Could the internet possibly fall into this category? Surely not.

But as a vehicle for sales, it seems to have potential in two directions. First, the mail-order shopping aspect referred to above. Second, the provision of consultancy to help other non-computer companies into the market.

You might expect sales of network computers to enter the equation at this point, but I?m not convinced. The prime movers in that field, Larry Ellison of Oracle and Scott MacNealy of Sun, are starting to talk about NCs supplied free to service subscribers, in the way that satellite TV viewers get the set-top box as part of the deal. Granted, they don?t expect such generosity to be extended to companies taking hundreds of the things. At the moment they are talking only about household subscriptions, with one unit per household in most cases. But whether or not the corporate users manage to avoid paying for their NCs, it surely won?t be a big deal for a reseller.

Still, two targets out of three isn?t a bad selection to shoot at. And if you miss the bus this time round, the IT business being what it is, you can rely on there being another one along in a minute... unlike comets. Perhaps it?s just as well.