In 1968, film director Stanley Kubrick gave us the future. And that future gave us a computer with attitude.

Kubrick’s science-fiction classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, unveiled HAL 9000, an onboard computer that used its artificial intelligence to sabotage astronauts on an ill-fated mission to Jupiter.

Not only did HAL manage to foil the mission, but its calm and psychotically mellow voice succeeded in giving chills to movie-goers for nearly three decades. With its red-rimmed, unblinking and unnerving orange eye, HAL ranks with Darth Vader as one of the all-time space villains.

The funny thing is, more than 30 years since the release of Kubrick’s Oscar-winning movie, we’re still dealing with intimidating and imposing technology. The only thing we have over Gary Lockwood, the astronaut HAL sends tumbling to his death in deep space, is that our computers aren’t trying to kill us.

Of course, on our worst days of website construction, crashes and glitches, it sure may seem like it.

Kubrick gave us futuristic art and a glimpse of what the future may hold. Only now the future is here and we are still fumbling with questions, concerns and yes, anxieties about what computers and cyberspace will mean to the sanitary supply business.

Perhaps in these uncertain times it’s best to remember a bit of advice HAL gave to a frantic astronaut on the verge of losing it: “I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over.”

A sound suggestion, even if it comes from a whacked, astronaut-killing, super-computer.

Still, what we know of the future is what we know of the past.

The history of technology is fairly consistent. First off, lots of things will change, but in a decade the world will still look pretty much the same as it does now.

Certainly computers and the Internet will make even more information available to even more people. Faster, smaller, cheaper computers will mean more of your end users will be doing business online. All of which will not only make more sense for your e-business development, but more money for your business.

Some Things Never Change
For all the hype — positive and negative — that surrounds the Web telling us what e-business may or may not have in store for us, and for all that we hear about the New Economy, some things will never change.

No matter how pervasive the Internet becomes, we’ll still live in houses. We’ll still have a TV in the living room and a remote to control it with. We’ll still be running late. We’ll still be pressed for time. And our kids will still play soccer and baseball and football on grass, not only on video screens.

Stating the obvious? Perhaps. But perhaps the obvious is important to keep in focus when all things technological seem a blur.

So this year, let’s all take breath, if not a pill, and relax just a bit. Together we’ll explore everything from how e-business works to how it doesn’t. We’ll share advice from experts and from folks just like you who are trying to make sense of it all. And, from time to time, we’ll stand together slack-jawed and amazed, wondering how the heck we’ve ever come so far so fast.

And through it all, we’ll try to remember that no matter what changes technology brings to our business, one thing will always remain the same: The products and service your end-users like, need and use will continue to do well.

Sure, technology can have a gee-whiz factor to it, but it still has to work for you. If we’ve learned nothing else from Stanley Kubrick’s visionary tale, it’s that.




POSTED ON: 2/1/2001