Article content

When Paul Simon wrote “these are the days of miracles and wonder” for the “Boy in the Bubble” track of his classic 1986 album Graceland, he didn’t have Amazon in mind. Amazon hadn’t been invented yet. Jeff Bezos was 22 years old, just-graduated from Princeton with a bachelor of science in engineering. He didn’t co-found Amazon until 1994, when he was 30 and senior VP of a hedge fund, which he left to open up the new business in the now-famous rented garage in Seattle.

Sign In or Create an Account

or View more offersArticle content

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content

Lots of things in 2026 qualify as miracles and wonders: mRNA vaccines, catchable and reusable rockets, routine joint replacements, smart phones, drones (for good and ill) and a long list of others. The other day a column of mine appeared on the Apple News feed no more than 10 minutes after I filed it to the National Post’s press system. That’s kind of miraculous.

Article contentWe apologize, but this video has failed to load.Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.Article contentArticle content

But Amazon surely qualifies. You order something at 10:30 at night and it arrives the next day — before noon the last time I did that. You usually have tons of options to choose from and you get customer reviews to tell you an item’s strong and weak points. Amazon’s not perfect. It once sent the wrong version of an item I had ordered. And once an order didn’t show up at all — though getting a refund was quick and easy. As are returns.

Article content

With Amazon Prime shipping is free and, a weird product tie-in, you also get access to basically all the music ever recorded. Plus there’s a TV and movie streaming service. You get a complete online record of your purchases. (It tells me I’ve been using it since 2009.) And it keeps reminding me I’m not taking advantage of its free podcasts.

Article content

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content

Because I buy books through Kindle, it offers me deals on the kind of things I read. The other day it offered me the complete Harvard Classics for $1.99. The Classics are themselves a classic, five shelf-feet of books published in 1909-10, edited by Harvard president Charles W. Eliot. Kindle says my $1.99 gets me 43,958 pages and that “due its large file size, this book may take longer to download.” Yes, I could go to a library and read all the Harvard classics. Or even download them free from a library. But having them on my phone — my phone! — or tablet is so much easier.

Article contentRead More

  1. William Watson: Let’s see the last draft. Inquiring voters want to know
  2. William Watson: Fact-checking the Canada-U.S. word grenades
  3. Story continues belowThis advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content

If I’d described such a service to you 40 years ago, when Graceland came out, I suspect you would have been skeptical. I would have been. Yet here it is. People say that the way technology was changing in the 1990s Amazon was just waiting to happen. Someone was going to figure it out. Jeff Bezos just had great timing. Well, yes, but Bezos got it going when millions of others didn’t, and lived through many years of losses, when people kept telling him it wasn’t going to work, until profits, quite large ones, began coming in. So more power to him. Around here, oligarchs get that way by doing tons of neat things.