>I'm sorry, but buying things on the internet wasn't laughed at, Yes, it was laughed at and during the early internet days, people were skeptical that online s

>I'm sorry, but buying things on the internet wasn't laughed at, Yes, it was laughed at and during the early internet days, people were skeptical that online shopping would become mainstream. An example includes the famous prediction from Clifford Stoll from 1995[1] : >Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure. [...] Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping--just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet--which there isn't--the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople. Clifford was correct in that brick & mortar stores wouldn't become obsolete. But he was very wrong about the mass consumer adoption of internet shopping. Many agreed with his mispredictions at the time. [1] https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306 https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv...