Today I had a delivery of a case of wine. I don’t drink much, and normally I get what bottles we do consume from the local supermarket. This time however we are preparing for an event in the future where we have to entertain a lot of people and my wife encouraged me to take a look at some of the online services.

Where does this lead us? Well for a start it seems like the delivery services are replacing the shop assistants with whom we’d interact. Most of our Christmas shopping was done online this year, and I can’t see that changing much. Our neighbours use an online grocery store while I’ve been encouraging my family to do the same. My wife instead of looking in her recipe books now looks online, while my son has read an immense number of books on his kindle.

I’ve abandoned my keyboard for this post and I’m dictating it using my android smartphone – it’s surprisingly accurate.  My use of social media has blossomed this year and it’s not just the typical Facebook post a photograph type of information.  I now tweet, google+, use Lotus Connections and LinkedIn. I noticed a distinct lack of Christmas cards this year even though I systematically sent to all my contacts. And those who still talk to me are primarily those who I contact through electronic means such as Facebook, e-mail, instant messaging and so forth.  So those who are social get more social, while those not seem to fall behind.

I think it that leaves us to rapidly and ruthlessly abandon the methods and means of yesteryear and move swiftly and ruthlessly into the new world.  Will it be pain free? Will it be seamless?  Perhaps not, but after all the new world itself changes even as we speak and the Internet is already two decades old. Where next?