Signs of the Times
Electronic Commerce is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as using computer networks to conduct business, including buying and selling online, electronic funds transfer, business communications, and using computers to access business information resources. The Electronic Commerce Association describes electronic commerce as ‘doing business electronically’. More precisely we could describe electronic commerce as involving the exchange of information using a combination of structured messages (EDI), unstructured messages (e-mail and documents), data access and direct support for business processes across the value chain. The Internet is only a small fraction of e-commerce applications. Intranets, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems all contribute to business to business marketing, operations and financial services (Wareham, 2000). The Internet was designed to be used by government and academic users, but now it is rapidly becoming commercialized. It has on-line "shops", even electronic "shopping malls". Customers, browsing at their computers, can view products, read descriptions, and sometimes even try samples. They could pay by credit card, transmitting the necessary data by modem; but inte . . .
Processing time for a reasonably safe digital signature conspires against keeping costs per transaction low. rcepting messages on the Internet is trivially easy for a smart hacker, so sending a credit-card number in an unscrambled message is inviting trouble. The fourth technical component in the evolution of e-commerce is flexibility. Everyone who expects to receive a message publishes a key. Businesses need two keys in public-key encryption: one to encrypt the other to decrypt the message. These four key areas are security, authentication, anonymity, and divisibility. Today's paper money floats so freely throughout the economy that serial numbers reveal nothing about our spending habits. Although encryption fortifies our electronic transaction against thieves, there is a cost: The processing overhead of encryption/decryption makes high-volume, low-volume payments prohibitively expensive. It would be relatively safe to send a credit card number encrypted with a hard-to-break code. For merchants, a secure and easily divisible supply of electronic money will motivate more Internet surfers to become on-line shoppers. The server poses a question, and the system seeking access offers an answer. Electric-money systems must be able to handle high volume at a marginal cost per transaction. Depending on key length, an average machine can only sign between twenty and fifty messages per second. Security, authentication, anonymity, and divisibility all have developers working to produce the collective answers that may open the floodgates to electronic commerce in the near future. Both consumers and merchants could see a windfall if these problems are solved.
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Acceptance Essays
