To be, or not to be, that is the business

"For every man has business and desire." - Hamlet: Act 1, Scene 5

As Hamlet reminds us, business has been one of mankind's principal activities since the begining of time. However, until the 20th century, "business" consisted of simple exchanges of goods or services.

Well into the 20th century, by far the greater part of mankind's business could still be summed up in these famous lines from A E Housman's A Shropshire Lad:

"The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair
There's men from the barn, and forge and the mill and the fold." (xxiii)

Housman could certainly not have imagined the totally new professions which came into existence only few years after his death in 1936. Perhaps that was just well; verse xxiii would not have been quite so poetic if it ran something like:

"There's men from the Microchip Factory, the Nuclear Power Plant, the TV Studio, the Comsat Ground Station and the Internet Server."

Business, like all other human activities, is conditioned by the technology available at the time. Looking back into history, we can see these major stages of development: writing, mail, semaphore, telegraph, telephone, movies, radio, television, communications satelite, fax, video, email, DVD.

What other forms of communications or entertainment can possibly be imagined?

I'm glad you asked me that...

Sir Arthur C Clarke, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 12 April 2003