By Lisa Burroughes, 30 June 2000 00:15
NEWS Comments from SAS CEO Jim Goodnight, that internet companies need and offline presence to survive sparked a lively debate among silicon.com's guests on Behind the Headlines. Although Perri 6, senior research fellow at the University of Strathclyde, Richard Sykes, chairman of Morgan Chambers and Chris Setz, president of the Network Professionals Association, agreed there's no golden rule to the success of ecommerce, the issue of whether its future should be mapped on convetions of traditional retail was a sticking point. Setz said: "I rail against the idea that somehow we are going to match the future on the past. I think there are revolutionary opportunities in the past but the really new opportunities are those that defy tradition." He argued that ecommerce has given consumers the ability to shop in a way that they've never had before, citing the example of aggregate-buying websites such as letsbuyit.com. However, Perri 6 and Richard Sykes were less convinced. Sykes said: "It's always been clear that a tremendous amount of the new economy was going to be refashioned from the fabric of the old. You don't create everything from a greenfield site." Perri 6 agreed. He said: "Consumption is not just a transaction. It is a ritual and social activity in every society - you've got to take account of the ways in which people build cultures of consumption." Also up for discussion this week was the progress of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. You can watch the full programme in the Politics Channel (http://www.silicon.com/a38347 )
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