Too Much Stuff...
Thursday: August 28, 2008 6:58 AM
We can sometimes get lost in our "communications" world where there are only 2-3 competitors or the belief that the battles of today are all bi-polar; Microsoft vs. Apple or Democrat versus Republican. The reality is something much different in that we have endless choices. When I was in my early teens, my grandfather would take me down to the Grocery Store in Midville, GA (Think Mayberry, R.F.D.). Grocery store may be a stretch by today's standards in that the store wasn't much bigger than a CVS Pharmacy. You had three choices for cereal and my grandfather seemed to love Rice Krispies which was good since that was one of the brands they carried. They had a couple brands of toothpaste and maybe a couple brands of chewing tobacco. My grandfather didn’t live long enough or have the desire to travel but I wonder what he might have thought about a Wal-Mart or Kroger with 45,000 products to choose from? The cereal isle alone is 60 feet long and five shelves high. The local news store only carried a couple hundred books which is a far cry from the 4 million books on Amazon.com. I remember reading an interesting quote a few years ago:
"We have more cars than drivers, more homes than families, more phones than talkers, more TV's than members of the family.."
I can't remember the rest of it but you get the idea; we live in a world of local abundance. This is possible for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that of technology. While there are 4 million books on Amazon, I am only interested in about 50 of them. I use the search engine, customer ranking, and feedback to narrow my selections down to something that I can work with to make a decision. This is a good thing since our time, attention span, and trust continues to drop while our choices and media messages continue to increase. The best thing about going with my Grandfather to the store is that we would stop by the bar on the way home. For not telling my Grandmother, he would buy me a bottle of Sprite which to me was the only product they sold.
We can sometimes get lost in our "communications" world where there are only 2-3 competitors or the belief that the battles of today are all bi-polar; Microsoft vs. Apple or Democrat versus Republican. The reality is something much different in that we have endless choices. When I was in my early teens, my grandfather would take me down to the Grocery Store in Midville, GA (Think Mayberry, R.F.D.). Grocery store may be a stretch by today's standards in that the store wasn't much bigger than a CVS Pharmacy. You had three choices for cereal and my grandfather seemed to love Rice Krispies which was good since that was one of the brands they carried. They had a couple brands of toothpaste and maybe a couple brands of chewing tobacco. My grandfather didn’t live long enough or have the desire to travel but I wonder what he might have thought about a Wal-Mart or Kroger with 45,000 products to choose from? The cereal isle alone is 60 feet long and five shelves high. The local news store only carried a couple hundred books which is a far cry from the 4 million books on Amazon.com. I remember reading an interesting quote a few years ago:
"We have more cars than drivers, more homes than families, more phones than talkers, more TV's than members of the family.."
I can't remember the rest of it but you get the idea; we live in a world of local abundance. This is possible for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that of technology. While there are 4 million books on Amazon, I am only interested in about 50 of them. I use the search engine, customer ranking, and feedback to narrow my selections down to something that I can work with to make a decision. This is a good thing since our time, attention span, and trust continues to drop while our choices and media messages continue to increase. The best thing about going with my Grandfather to the store is that we would stop by the bar on the way home. For not telling my Grandmother, he would buy me a bottle of Sprite which to me was the only product they sold.
