• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, March 13, 2006

According to Parks Associates researchers, 39 million U.S. households don't have a Web connection, and the majority of these Internet-less souls have no desire to get online. Imagine a world where you still have to buy a stamp to send a letter, buy a CD to hear a tune, go to the bank to transfer funds, or buy a newspaper to look up when and where the movies are playing. Or actually set foot in a retail store to secure your Xmas presents--or, worst of all, have to explain to teenagers why they can't IM their pals.

On the other hand....

Wouldn't it be nice to never get another e-mail telling you that you've won $25 million in a lottery you never entered, or warning you that your PayPal account, which you never opened in the first place, has been accessed by some unauthorized offshore account, or that some recent college graduate thinks YOUR firm is a perfect fit for their animal husbandry degree?

Wouldn't it be nice to put your head on the pillow and not have to worry about click fraud, take-over pages, spam blogs, optimization, frequency capping, codex, ROI, "tipping points," click-through rates, what Tom Hespos is thinking right now, redirects, pixels, engagement, unsold inventory, paid placements, if behavioral means the same thing on any two sites in America; indexing, industry standards, background downloads, B2C, multi-tasking, impressions, RSS, conversions, "perfect storms," iPods, pop-ups, search, platform, bloggers, networks, if Jason Calacanis will buy an apartment in your building; podcasts, ad serving, RFPs, "rock stars," reach, links, unique visitors, the world according to David Verklin, hotspotting, response rates, Claria, if YAHOO can develop Hollywood content, privacy, retouched pictures, anything having to do with Microsoft, if Larry Dobrow will review your favorite magazine, hotlinks, valuation, page views, what would Wenda do?, cookies, taxonomy, "proprietary" and/or "state of the art," viruses, why Steve Case just won't go away--for good this time, CRM, broadband, what will Walt think? (and are he and Katie "more" than colleagues)?; uploads, frames, Web 2.0, cross-platform, "task" used as a verb, MySpace, log-ins, Ben Edelman, scale, click-stream, CPM, user-generated content, narrowcasting, gigabytes, "terrestrial," open-source; content syndication, blade servers; hackers, lurkers, and gawkers; mashups, "agnostic," VCs, Beta, does Jack Myers know who I am?, firewalls, micro-anything, Webcasts, "growth," interactive, anything having to do with Google, ISPs, Best Practices, was it Kevin Ryan or Kevin O'Connor? rich media, "traction," social-networking; Internet Protocol--anything, anyone who says they "get it," disintermediation, revenue streams; content management, traffic that doesn't involve motor vehicles, avatars, "assets," security breaches; PPC, "marketplace," post-bubble, fiber-optic, anything-centric, e blasts, "consumer-facing," PDFs, early-stage, late stage, authenticate, another AOL screw-up, PPV, phishing, desktop, why won't the media supervisor return my calls and e-mails? TTYL, Craigslist, and most of all... "you've got mail!"