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Rural Hermits and Internet Shopping
Internet Retailer points to a study about online shopping habits on the rise.
According to payment processor Retail Decisions- 46% of American consumers plan to shop for retail goods or travel arrangements on the Internet this holiday season as do 43% of British consumers.
I don’t find this surprising. I have a friend who lives in rural Kentucky. By rural I mean extremely rural. He has no running water in his house, uses an outhouse for necessary functions, he recycles and reuses everything and lives almost exclusively off the land through his garden and canning. He doesn’t subscribe to newspapers or magazines and prefers this solitude and independence. I must admit when visiting I find myself envying his self-imposed simplicity.
However, he does have an Internet connection, a PC and a laptop. Although it is dial-up connection he plans to move to cable soon. Despite my hermatic friend’s meager living quarters and spartan lifestyle he is a digital adept and the Internet plays a major role in his life.
He conducts almost all of his shopping online, and uses the Internet as his primary source of information, research and communication to world-wide friends.
Now that high speed cable is reaching his remote region he plans to utilize VOIP too.
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This is really interesting to me, as previously hermits were relegated to agrarian industries (or, of course, kidnapping and mad scientist research). I’ve been waiting to see when knowledge worker jobs and status would start to move to the rural areas, but I haven’t really (aside from myself) seen it much.
I’m particularly curious about your friend’s use of the internet for news and intellectual stimulation - one of the elements traditional hermits eschewed. Perhaps we’re in store for a rise of non-misanthropic hermits.
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