Technology has revolutionised most aspects of life, including Christian Bookshops. It changes how we relate to both our suppliers and our customers. Some people have seen the opportunities and jumped on board. And yet many of us are feeling overwhelmed by the scale of change in the air – and wireless technology means it really is all happening in the air!
I am sitting in my lounge room typing this post on a laptop. When I save the post, the data somehow travels through the air, completely invisible to me, and goes to a little box in my study. That box then sends the data through a cable to an exchange somewhere in Orange. The data then travels away and sits in a box in Sydney. And then someone in Melbourne, or even New York, can read this paragraph on a phone while sitting on a bus. And this all happens in seconds.
It sure beats pulling a rabbit out of a top hat! And yet, for Generation Y the digital world is normal.
It is not magical, it is the world as they have always known it.
Do you remember getting the card stamped in the back of a book when you borrowed it from the library?
Today’s primary school students have never seen such a thing. Their books simply get scanned in and out of the library.
Life has changed. Information is only ever seconds away from our fingertips – both for us and our customers. It is my dream that this website will grow into a bountiful resource for Australian Christian Retailers as together we discover exciting new ways to combine global technology with our local communities.
(P.S. Just as life does not consist of the abundance of possession, similarly it does not consist of the abundance of data! In all things, may we be rich towards God!).