Paul Hemp points us to a Harvard Business Review article on the future of e-tailing in virtual worlds. The article claims that e-commerce is going to shift from web transactions to online simulations of shopping, via virtual malls in 3d worlds. The usual references to American Apparel's store in Second Life, but goes beyond virtual stores as advertisements to suggest that shoppers will meet up online to go shopping. Sociologist Bob Moore calls it a return to the "social and recreational aspect of shopping."

I'm probably cynical about everything these days, but I wonder if a return to the shopping mall, real or virtual, is in the cultural cards. One positive change wrought by online retailing has been the deemphasis of shopping as culture. We buy online so we don't have to center our social lives around consumption. We still do in large part, but I think the stoic solitude of online retailing has injected a much-needed dose of needs assessment into consumer goods. Then again, there is a charming irony in the idea of neoyuppies in their effete, overpriced post-new-urbanist dwellings, glued to their computer screens as their avatars wander the virtual 1980s.