“Five years ago, we thought of the Web as a new medium, not a new economy,” said Clement Mok, an early Web pioneer for the likes of IBM and the Mayo Clinic and founder of NetObjects.com, a software design company.

 

If you agree with that statement, then you will likely agree with the gut feeling the economists, like Civil War tacticians, are fighting the last war even as the current war is raging full-throttle.

 

Those with their hands on the bailout purse strings might want to catch “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” at the multiplex. One of the characters runs the mall”™s pen store and therein lies a lesson in our rapidly shifting economics. Spoiler alert: The joke is that the character works in a pen store, not that there is a pen store to begin with.

 

There is probably too much retail space in America. Yes, anecdotal bursts like Black Friday argue otherwise, but for months at a time many stores mark time in space they neither need full time, nor want to pay rent on full time.

 

The Web site Internetretailer.com claims 40 percent of American homes this year will buy something online. That”™s an impressive percentage when you figure that number was a rock-solid zero as recently as the first Clinton administration, which serves as our most-recent template for a recession.

 

The Internet alone makes for a huge difference between this downturn and the savings-and-loan fueled recession of the early ”™90s. In the old recession model, businesses that floundered would see their spaces filled by new ideas and fresh products. Out with the leisure suits and in with the Ugg boots. Now, with most goods available online, it remains to be seen whether the next fashion must-have will require any retail space at all.

 

The dark thought no one seems willing to say aloud is ”¦ What if all that retail space, in the span of 17 years, has become obsolete?

 

And this is happening against the backdrop of cheap gasoline that should in theory promote a drive to the mall.

 

There are soon to be 589 Linens ”™n Things stores vacant on the American landscape. Steve & Barry”™s is upping the national vacant space integer by 276 stores. Throw in 567 Circuit City stores and a few more drowning giants and this is space on an unprecedented level.

 

In the age of the Internet, some retailers will prove to be dinosaurs watching the doomsday comet streak across the skies: Not everyone”™s going to make it. But who?

 

How will we buy things in 2030? Will we hop in the Hummer and drive to the mall? It”™s tempting to think of a well-oiled future of jet-packs and carefree consumerism, but the reality will likely be something different ”“ and not a sober person in the world would claim to know how it will play out.

That”™s always been a problem with economists, a group sometimes mistaken for fortunetellers, but possessing wildly foggy crystal balls. Bubbles, booms, busts ”¦ they come and go; economists only get it right after the fact, as in December when, about a year after the rest of us figured it out, the economists declared a recession. It conjures the image of an oncologist standing graveside saying, “Looks like cancer.”

 

It”™s important to remember economics is still classified as a social science and, as French writer Jean-Paul Kauffman said in 2007, “The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.”

 

So ”¦ too much space and not enough business. There are answers to the retail conundrum. At one local business, the solution could be going over to the enemy: a hardware computer kiosk that will turn a 5,000-square-foot collection of hammers, nails paint and the like into a warehouse as big as Pennsylvania. See it. Order it. Pick it up at the store or have it shipped direct to the store. And (the important part) store personnel are there to talk customers through their purchases: “It sounds like you”™re after crown moldings. Let”™s have a look.” Or: “If you get those hex screws, you”™ll need an Allen wrench, too.”

 

To which the customer says: “Thank you very much. You can be sure I”™ll be back and I”™ll tell all my friends how helpful you are.”

 

That”™s the sound of adaptability. That”™s the sound of recovery.

 

For those with further answers, there”™s plenty of vacant room to test your theories. Maybe next year will find an online tie emporium on every corner and folks will say, “Remember when there used to be a Starbuck”™s here?”