e-commerce

Remember the time when there was no Internet? Where advances in telecommunications and computing largely occurred side-by-side in the past, today, they converge in the Internet. Timesharing, the concept of linking a large numbers of users to a single computer via remote terminals, was developed at MIT in the late 50s and early 60s. In 1973, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf developed the basic ideas of the Internet. Now days almost everybody is connected to Internet. WORLD INTERNET CONNECTIVITY (As of 6/15/95) (http://www.pbs.org/nerds/timeline/network.html) There is another thing that Internet brought us at affordable price: it is electronic commerce (e-commerce). There is no specific definition for what is e-commerce everybody interprets it differently. Some view it as selling products and services on the net others more educated people see it as any networked enabled business practice such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), the World Wide Web, or email. Before the Internet small businesses were restricted on electronic communications because of high cost on installation and maintenance of networks. Business communications were performed by fax or telephone. Although, the Internet gave the ability for small businesses to become automated, which is advantageous for them, it also brought some costs and disadvantages, and it is facing bigger obstacles that will decide the future of electronic-commerce like government regulations. There are four functions of e-commerce: communication, process improvement, service management, and transaction capabilities. The perfect example form communication function is email. It delivers information or documents to facilitate business transactions. The process improvement function covers the automation and improvement of business processes. A good example of this would be networking two computers together so they could share and transfer data rather than have a person take data from one machine and input into another. Service management is the third function of EC. This is the application of technology to improve the quality of service. A good example of this function is any courier company web site. It permits customers to track shipments and schedule pick-ups 24 hours a day worldwide without having to talk to a customer service representative. Customer service is greatly enhanced due to the capabilities of the site. The final fun...

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...rity of the U.S. population has a misguided impressions of cyberspace being a place where anarchy rules. While some less than desirable activities and pursuits certainly exist on the Web, none are worse than can be found in society at large. In many respects the Web is just a reflection of our societal norms and behavior. However, EC development, especially on a retail level, will lag until large segments of society feel more comfortable with the medium. The government could help facilitate this with a more proactive position on such issues as encryption, security, and privacy. My prediction on the future of electronic-commerce is since it is already here it is not going anywhere. And like any other invention will be perfected and advanced with time.

Bibliography

Works Cited.

Cringely, Robert X. “A History of the Computer: Network.” At: http://www.pbs.org/nerds/timeline/network.html Kalakota, Ravi., and Andrew B.

Whinston. “Electronic Commerce, A Manager's Guide.” Addison-Wesley, 1997 Kling, Arnold. “The Economic Consequences of WWW” At: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/IT94/Proceedings/ComEc/kling/compare.html

ZDNet E-Commerce At: http://www.zdnet.com/enterprise/e-business/