Central within the discourses that have surrounded the commercial internet during its
emergence has been an underlying promise of disorder. The claims for consumer
empowerment with which e-commerce was promoted and discussed within industry and
academic literature (Fiamberg; Gates; Horton; Levine et al. for instance), coupled with recurring
claims that the emergence of e-commerce was as profound a shift as that occasioned by the
Industrial Revolution (Dancer; Sullivan; Lynch for instance), established an underlying sense of
chaotic upheaval - a clear and present danger to the established order
