蘑菇街英语简介

1. Introduction Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce) has almost successful overnight . Equally quickly it has become a significant element in commercial activities globally, particularly in the developed countries where suitable infrastructure support is available. E-Commerce, of course, has no single definition, meaning only commercial activity which is somehow linked to or supported by electronic communications. It may be anything from a simple advertising presentation available on the World Wide Web, or an e-mail communication; all the way to an entire multi-million dollar transaction initiated and promulgated in electronic form up; to and in some cases including the actual delivery via the net of information intensive goods or services.1 2. Advantages of E-commerce The advantages of E-Commerce from a commercial perspective are numerous: 1Online and more or less instantaneous searches with an unlimited number of criteria such as description, category, subcategory, location, color, size, and price range - i.e. The use of computerized information management for a huge and rapidly expanding globally distributed knowledge/information base along with the availability of full colour media including graphics, animation, sound and now video and no space or time limitations as to information delivery. 2Full two-way 24 hours/day, 7 days/week communications/information access capability which allows for instantaneous response and feedback concerning product/services and related information. 3Full processing of transactions (including delivery) for information intensive goods such as software, text, images, video, and music; downloadable directly to the consumer's computer at the time of purchase and including the opportunity for limitless product comparison. All of this leads directly to greatly intensified competition in these markets and lower margins, reducing costs to the end user. 4The elimination of the need for middlemen (disintermediation),leading to lowered transaction costs (including marketing, sales, transaction processing), reduced overhead, and reduced inventory and labor costs. 5The delivery of after-sales service and support directly and low cost. 3. E-Commerce and Community Economic Development E-Commerce presents significant challenges to Community Economic Development (CED)4. CED has for the most part been low technology, focussing on those sectors of the economy which traditionally have not been technology or knowledge intensive and with relatively low technical skill requirements such as real estate development or rehabilitation, food retailing, craft manufacture and sale, tourism and particularly eco-tourism and so on. Most regions and communities with a strong interest in CED have been low income, with low skill levels, and little technology or training infra-structure. They have been ill-equipped to take leading edge advantage of the development of technology opportunities and have been "implementers" not "innovators" in technology use5. In many cases the Internet has come to be a central element in certain areas of social development and particularly in social advocacy, with those involved in these activities having developed innovative Internet based approaches and even applications. However, overall there has until recently been a strong feeling among those with Internet interests that the Net, whose origin was non-commercial should in fact remain non-commercial. Those with a social activist perspective and highly developed technical skills such as many of those who have been involved in the Free Software Movement and Open Source developments such as Linux, have resisted and even opposed the application of their skills and outputs for commercial purposes even in support of social sector economic activity. There have however, been a variety of efforts mostly from those already involved in CED to adapt or develop electronic based supports for their economic activities notably the work of the Public Web Market6, the work of the Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking (C\CEN) in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia7 and a variety of developing country initiatives some linked to the World Bank and others to other agencies. What characterized these early efforts was a lack of sustained funding which translated into the inability to develop the capacity for the on-going research and experimentation required to find optimal strategies for Net based commerce. 4. E-Commerce Opportunities for CED It is notable and interesting that one of the most active areas for business development in E-Commerce has been attempts to develop "community" E-Commerce web-sites or portals. There have been a number of attempts in this direction including failed attempts by Microsoft and a variety of start-ups which looked to create E-Commerce portals. These for example, attempted to provide substitutes for local newspapers with local news, sports and entertainment information, or in other cases civic and civic government information. In general, they are looking to "capture eyeballs" through these locally oriented web-sites, on the well known principle that individuals are mostly interested in things that are relatively close physically to themselves and their families. Many of the free-standing commercial "community portal" sites have disappeared or are not being updated, there not being sufficient advertising revenue to support the cost of the staff required to keep the sites up-to-date. A number of sites linked to local newspapers are still surviving since they can reuse information collected for other purposes, but even these do not appear to be independently profitable. A second development of some interest is the current concern with developing "community networking" among a number of the major Internet supplier firms such as for example, Nortel and Newbridge. They are looking on this as a way of generating sufficient traffic in local communities to require the installation of their high band-width networks. All of the major bandwidth suppliers and their associated firms are moving extremely aggressively to provide ever greater amounts of digital delivery capacity without having a clear sense of how all of this bandwidth could be used (and thus paid for). Several of the firms are operating on the assumption that only the development of local applications and a sophisticated user community in local areas will generate the demand of the educational, health and other community based applications they require to justify their services. The question then, is how can local communities or those concerned with CED adapt the technology and the methodology/business models developing to support E-Commerce applications to their requirements. 7. The future The future as they say in technology circles, is wireless, mobile, multi-media (voice, video, 3D) and broadband. All of these technology changes are rapidly developing and being incorporated into on-line and E-Commerce activities. From a CED perspective they are also following the path of earlier on-line technologies with a very steep decline in entry cost and ease of use or the non-professional user. Thus while CED enterprises need not be "first" users they certainly need not be "last" users nor should they be. Commercial firms are discovering that at least one leg of the stool on which virtual commerce is resting and will continue to rest, is face to face physically delimited communities and it is here, where the on-going and future strength and opportunities for growth and development of CED rests. By recognizing that E-Commerce and the opportunities it presents is no more technologically or dare I say it, ideologically daunting than credit cards or ATM machines, the possibility for E-Commerce to enhance the growth and local contribution of CED is significant.