Clicks-and-Mortar, Codes and Scripts, and C2Cs

An Introduction

The times are indeed changing.  Usually, change is ushered in by new ways
and systems introduced into society and culture.  And one big system that
has been introduced into our global system is the use of technology.  With
technology as one of the means of living in this age, our age is becoming
rapidly an information age - one that relies heavily on information in
its operations.  With the trend especially of business to speed up things
and make their operations more efficient, technology has even helped
business operations process transactions even more rapidly.  Although
many businesses and corporations place still much of their capital on fixed
assets, as is the traditional way of proceeding in building a business,
with the present influence of technology, capital building and development
is more and more transformed into intellectual capital - what many
businesses see as the core asset for building an enterprise in the third
millenium.

What is intellectual capital?  In her book, “Intellectual Capital: Core
Asset for the Third Millenium Enterprise”, Annie Brooking describes it as:
the intangible assets of an enterprise - customer loyalty, good collaboration
with business partners, intellectual property and knowhow, electronic
infrastructures, and the innovative potential and skills of employees.
If we perhaps simplify her description of intellectual capital, we may
just describe it as all those things pertaining to the way people
and technology interact so as to process the development of a business
and enterprise.  With this in our imagination, then big buildings and
big machinery do not as before occupy the main capitalization of a big
corporation.  It is the expertise of people in an enterprise and how
they put that expertise in the use of technology that seems to matter
in these present times.  With that as the present trend, new lifestyles
and new ways of living are coming to the fore among people, especially
the young.

With more and more use of technology, corporations or those who wish to
engage in their own business, are finding it easier to operate one.  One
great benefit is the ease and facility of communication.  Electronic mail
or email, has made it not only easier and faster, but also more inexpensive
to create business communications.  Also, when an entrepreneur makes his
business available online through a web site, then he can even go beyond
the capabilities of an entrepreneur in the past and make his business
reach global destinations.  Thus, starting a business enterprise in the
present age has made it easier through technology, as compared to the
past when everything relied much on processing paper work directly, and
transacting interpersonally with many people.  Technology has cut the
work of business transactions and lessened the time in processing it
through computerized systems.

This web log will seek to enter into this new system, grounding itself
well in the old way of proceeding, and integrating the new systems of
doing business, so as to continue providing people with services that
they need in order to live in this information age of the new millenium.
The web log will uniquely provide information from a Catholic context
and gear itself to be in line with both what the web 1.0 technology
environment requires and what ethical standards the Church gives in
relation to the use of this social medium of the internet.