(c) Copyright Warren Nguyen - 2000
Have you ever wondered where the prefix "e" as in email, e-commerce, will be spread to? A quick answer is perhaps everywhere. The addition of the letter e- to a whole host of word descriptions of human activities especially in commerce and marketing will continue at an exponential rate for some time to come, possibly until our vocabulary just becomes so saturated with e- (for electronic) or i- (for internet) that the letter e- will be dropped and words will return to their original forms. Just like before e-, "motor car" became "car", "airplane" dropped to "plane", telephone lost "tele" to be just "phone", personal computers or micro-computers - as we first called them - are now merely "computers".
I happened to ask myself this question just recently when an old friend of mine and his family dropped in for a social visit. This friend is an academic at one of the big universities in Sydney. Nearly two years ago he got a fellowship to do research at a university in the States. He already spent about 18 months in the States on leave without pay from his job. This time he came back to Sydney for his daughter's wedding. When I asked him when he would go back to the States to finish his fellowship he said he would not go back but would continue to do research for the fellowship here in Sydney until the end, and then he would return to his old teaching job. He continues his research via e-mail and up- and downloading on the internet. Bingo! He is to my astonishment indeed an e-researcher and the University in USA has become an e-employer. When I expressed my profound impression of how the internet is reshaping our life, his son-in-law, a young medico, also told us that recently he heard of a new thing called e-prescription!! And about this time there is plan of setting up a big e-University in America. It looks as a matter of fact soon almost everything will have an e- added to the front for description. Beginning with communication and commerce, e- will flow onto education, technology, and most of human activities in our daily life including even religion. It is thus very interesting to examine where the letter "e" can be added to and do a futurist on the prefix "e-".
First, how about e-scholarship. Soon it is expected that university will invent e-scholarship. With e-scholarship, prestigious universities like Harvard and Cambridge can give annually thousands and even millions of e-scholarships to bright students all over the world. The reason? E-scholarship is so inexpensive as it only involves around $100 a month for phone and internet bills for direct access to professors (possibly e-professors) currently on the faculty at the host university. No air-fares or accommodation costs and living expenses involved. There can even be e-PhD, e-Master, and e-Bachelor degrees awarded on the basis of the performance of e-students or e-scholarship holders. Then one would begin to understand why some people would say the difference between an e-degree and a conventional on-campus degree is only a matter of degree!
E- can also stand for e-extramarital affair. One can easily define an e-extramarital affair is one that involves a person already married but continuously or frequently having an affair with a lover on the internet. Bigamy though is not permitted in real life, may in fact be allowed if the letter e- is added, as e-bigamy. How about an e-kiss between e-lovers, or even between non-e or real lovers? It is already possible via the video telephone but through e-media one can imagine that the picture of each lover in kissing motion is first video taped and digitized on the screen. When one lover clicked the mouse onto icon "Kiss" or "Goodnight Kiss" the face of the other lover will appear on the computer screen with the lips in motion ready to be kissed. The rest can be easily understood and needs not be detailed here. Some computer manufacturers may as a marketing strategy give away an e-kiss software for every early purchaser.
When you feel like to have a drink, how about an e-drink, an e-cocktail or even an e-Beer? The concept is simple - surf for the best cocktail from the net, click the mouse then instruction for the mix will be transmitted via the computer to a simple robotic device at your e-bar at home, and the device will mix and shake the drink for you. Enjoy an e-daiquiri, or as James Bond would say: "An e-Martini, shaken but not stirred please".
Think of an e-barber or e-hairdresser. Fussy patrons can soon have a haircut or their hair done to their choice to the like of movie stars such as Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand. They can have their hair done without waiting by simply visiting an e-barber or e-hairdresser, which again is a simple robotic device linked with and instructed through the internet. What happens when an e-barber makes a mistake by, instead of cutting your hair to the style of a movie star, shaving off completely all your hair? You can e-sue the e-barber or bring the matter to e-arbitration!
Then e- can penetrate the law as well. It is easy to imagine an e-Court where each lawyer would carry with her a cellular phone with internet connection which gives access to legal precedents and statutes. The judge too would have a huge computer screen on the bench. This would do away with stacks of books that lawyers have to carry to Court for a hearing. There can even be an e-jury. As you would tend to agree that most people would hate to be selected to be on the jury panel, mainly because it would disrupt their daily life for as long as the trial takes. An e-jury idea would seem to solve the problem. Court hearing is video taped and downloaded onto a Court website with secret code for access. Every evening, after work and dinner, a juror would log onto the Court website and watch and listen to the Court hearing taking place during the day. At the end of the hearing all jurors would be linked by internet and go through the evidence and facts and then argue for the verdict through the net. The outcome? Should we call it e-justice?
It can be easily identified also that the prefix "e" can go very well and is fully compatible with consultations. We already have e-stockbrokers and e-tax-agents, and very soon we will have e-doctors, e-lawyers and e-dentists. If you want to see an e-dentist please make sure you choose a really very good one!! Also very soon we will have e-chemist or e-pharmacy opening 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Medicines will be delivered on your doorstep like pizza from the click of your mouse on the internet. In fact in January 2001 there was talk of merger between a large pizza chain and an international pharmaceutical corporation. Announcing the imminent merger in Zurich, the CEO of the pharmaceutical corporation said that each merger party can truly benefit from the other's technical expertise. The pharmaceutical corporation can learn a lot from home delivery techniques of the pizza chain, whereas the pizza chain can absorb hygienic and healthy food preparation from the pharmaceutical corporation!
One can also imagine that e- can save a lot of money in politics. Campaign funding can be cut by hundreds of million of dollars by the use of the internet. Even voting and vote counting can all be done by the internet. We all will soon see the demise of the Post Office world wide. The post office at the end of this decade will be something like an internet café. Some will also sell real coffee, tea and cakes and sandwiches. In some countries the post office will be a kind of franchise restaurant like MacDonald's, where every dinner table is equipped with a computer. Sending packages of gifts will all be done by the internet with every item of goods available for packaging and receiving at the receiving town or city. Other non-gift items such as personal photos and personal effects will be processed by a scanner or through the kitchen of the GPO restaurant.
e-Poems and e-Music may at the time of writing be already available. The idea is simple. When one wants to compose a poem or a piece of music or a song, one can download a special software from the internet which will enable the composition of a computer-made poem or song, from input of keywords to describe a situation or an inspirational landscape, the style of the verses or the tempo and rhythm of the music.
The first internet- or technology-led sharemarket crash took place in April 2000. It was quickly called the e-crash, and despite the crash the internet revolution still goes on with increased momentum. A lot of economists - possibly after losing money in the e-crash - took to research with a vengeance. The result was unprecedented in the history of mankind. In the year 2002 there were 99 economists jointly awarded with the Nobel Prize in economics for their e-collaboration in formulating a new economic theory for the new global economy. Basically the new theory will reduce unemployment to near zero percent, by work creation and placement through the internet. And then only those who are truly allergic to the computer will be unemployed, and qualified for social welfare benefit. The only problem resulted was that as the monetary value of the Nobel Prize was divided into 99 parts for the Nobel laureates it became so insignificant that the Nobel Committee decided to substitute the money prize for a computer with internet connection for life for each of the Nobel economists!
How about e-confession? It is feasible too as soon as we get an Ok from the Pope. It merely involves sending an email outlining the confession to a Father (or maybe an e-Father). But the pervasion of the e- extension into religion may have to stop right there. Mainly because the next step would be to have prayer through the computer, or to put simply, e-prayer. E-prayer involves two extremely difficult theological issues. The first one is that would God be prepared to listen to an e-prayer. And the second is that how can one obtain the email address of GOD or if possible, who on earth would have the authority to give God an email address? This possibly involves many theological conferences gathering not only the Pope but also the Queen of England as the Head of the Anglican Church, and many Christian leaders or clerics around the world. Only one thing seems clear at this stage, that is whoever that can obtain or assign the email address of God would most likely be the first e-Saint, that is someone that can perform miracles on the computer to alleviate pain and suffering of the human race.
Extension of every human activity by the e- letter thus is much more awesome and complicated than you would tend to imagine. At the end of the day you like me can only say: "What an e-life!".
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