Mobility, Sociability and Creativity in a Networked World

Abstract

When we began our scholarly association and deep friendship with Professor Wolfgang Fritz, the Internet was a young and evolutionary medium. Because of historical reasons, the United States had longer experience with the Internet – mainly because the U.S. Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA) had laid the foundation for a “survivable electronic network” – but the rest of the world was catching up and progressing fast, especially Europe and particularly Germany. Early successes (Dholakia and Dholakia 1999 [10]; Dholakia, Dholakia, Laub, Hwang and Zwick 2002 [12]), as well as wrenching failures (Pandya and Dholakia 2005a [35], 2005b [36]), with electronic commerce came from the United States. Studies of the world of e-commerce, however, increasingly needed global perspectives. The two authors of this article, and our colleague Norbert Mundorf (also a professor at the University of Rhode Island or URI), found out that Professor Wolfgang Fritz at Technischen Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig was already a pioneer on research on the Internet and e-commerce in Germany. This led to significant URI-Braunschweig collaborations that resulted in joint publications in Germany (Fritz 1999 [28], 2001 [29]) as well as in the United States (Dholakia, Fritz, Dholakia and Mundorf 2002 [15]). Authors from or connected to URI made multiple contributions to the Internet Marketing book of Wolfgang Fritz on topics like transformation of markets (Dholakia and Dholakia 1999 [10]; Dholakia, Dholakia, Laub and Hwang 1999 [11]), economic models (Dholakia, Dholakia and Park 1999 [13]; Dholakia, Dholakia, Park and Kshetri 2001 [14]), digital divide (Dholakia 1999 [8]; Dholakia and Kshetri 2001 [16]), and e-commerce (Dholakia, Mundorf and Zwick 1999 [17], 2001 [18]).