The Apocalypse Is Upon Us

By Peter Young Staff Writer

ports Illustrated might list this as "This Week's Sign That The Apocalypse Is Upon Us." The popularity of the modern mall or shopping complex seems to be growing. It continues to diversify its target shoppers as exemplified by its stores and their locations: books next to lingerie, fast food next to tuxedo rentals. Similar to this is the expansion of audience, and general increase of use of the internet. The inevitable next step: the grotesque grafting of the two into the form of on-line malls. Listed in directories beside the Mall of America homepage, one such mall is "Mallenium," with its boastful headline "Welcome to the Mall-of-the-Future, and the best of Internet shopping today!" The best in internet shopping? At best, this is a sluggish advertisement of future possibilities rather than a useful of time- (never mind money) saving tool.

Once onto the site, www.mallenium.com, Mallenium offers several possibilities: to shop on "super sights" or "text time," to perform a general search, or to learn how to become a merchant. The stores themselves then fall under several categories, from "Computer Products" to "Entertainment" to "Real Estate." The actual shopping is done by going through the list of products and selecting the ones desired by placing them in a "shopping basket," a list kept by the site.

At the end of one's "shopping experience," as Mallenium calls it, one is prompted to select a method of payment. The options start with CyberCash, a money format used by Mallenium's affiliated businesses; CommerceWave, and MerchantWave. Although the actual idea is simple enough, figuring out the final method of payment is difficult. The next option is the CyberCoin. In idea as well as name, it is similar to CyberCash except in that it allows for increments under ten dollars. "Traditional Methods" is the third on the list.

CommerceWave, the parent company associated with Mallenium, claims to have created the new frontier for shopping as well as internet possibilities with its new currency and overwhelming product list. It even offers "World Hearts," obviously not a new concept, but noticeable as part of a mall. The program literally allows players from around the world to play one of the most popular card games around. This can be seen as Mallenium's attempted replacement of the human interaction that real shopping centers are based upon. Another option, that of becoming a merchant and setting up a store in Mallenium, has the same feel. Each owner has her or his own homepage to treat as determined by the store's products.

The minute personal touch may yet save the idea of the on-line mall if it continues to grow. The prices, however, are steep, and the site itself often has difficulty properly loading before one even has the opportunity to discover the former. Finding spaces in parking garages may seem to be easy next to figuring out CyberCash. But the most telling part of all is the lack of atmosphere, that sense of accomplishment many people find wandering among the hordes of shoppers and numerous stores away from their computers.

Witold Rybczynski, a well-known architect, social historian, and author of such books as City Life, calls the shopping mall "the new downtown" because of the loss of city centers as the population moves outward. The sprouting of on-line malls could be a sign of the further transformation of the downtown into an isolated, impersonal environment where one can buy and sell without ever seeing salesclerk or customer. Mallenium is a good example of how far the internet has come. But it still has a long way to go.