In the past month, I've had the amusing experience of having media types call me to assist them with stories proving, in one case, that "this will be the Christmas of e-shopping because stores can't get good help" and, just a week later, that "e-shopping is fading and people really want to go to stores."

Of course they're both right, and both wrong. Retail will be changing in some fascinating ways, but there's also a good reason why those big-box malls keep being built. I recently ventured into the heart of U.S. retailing, the New York metropolitan area, to see what's coming down the pike.

It's certainly true that more and more people are using online resources to research and even make their purchases. Statistics Canada tells us that Canadians ordered more than $7.9 billion worth of goods and services over the Internet for personal or household consumption in 2005, placing almost 50 million orders online during that year.

Almost seven million Canadians actually shopped online in 2005, while slightly more than nine million did some online "window shopping."

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Customers will race to cash in on Boxing Day sales, but retail innovations may relegate cash transactions to the sidelines.

Yet, going to the mall retains its appeal for all ages. Unlike Canada, which has the post-Christmas Boxing Day shopping orgy, the U.S. wisely puts its festival of greed before Christmas, on the Friday after Thanksgiving. On "Black Friday," turkey-stuffed citizens haul themselves out of bed early to gorge themselves on bargains. It's the traditional start of the holiday shopping spree, and the day many retailers go into the black for the year.

This Black Friday, stores battled to open earlier than the competition. The Best Buy branches in New Jersey had a 5 a.m. opening time, with people camped out overnight for super deals on plasma TVs and computers for US$398.

A New York City merchant offered 1-Gig flash drives for $2.56 and sold spindles of blank DVDs for a penny per disc. Lines stretched around the block.

Shopper Trak, which monitors 45,000 U.S. mall-based retail outlets, reported Black Friday sales were up six per cent over 2005, with the sole exception of Wal-Mart stores, which saw a slight decline in same-store sales.

Of course, stores can't make a business out of selling below cost, and they're going to need to be smart to keep business moving.

One leader in this area is Polo Ralph Lauren, which has installed a 67-inch display screen in its shop window on Madison Avenue. Customers interact with the system by touching images projected on the glass. Think Tom Cruise flicking at ghostly data in the movie Minority Report.

Besides calling up images of RL's pricey goods, customers can actually do real shopping by swiping a credit card through a reader, then pick up their purchases inside or have them delivered. Another option is to build a virtual shopping list, then e-mail it to yourself.

After-hours window shopping in New York used to be a harmless pastime, but now the credit cards can cause damage 24 hours a day, since this gizmo never sleeps.

It's worth noting that credit-card use has certainly reached a tipping point in New York City, where machines vend bus and subway MetroCards via Visa and Mastercard. Old hat for Asian cities, but many Canadian transit systems still make you fumble with change.

Another plus is that if you buy your monthly MetroCard this way, and then lose it, you can get it replaced for free. That's important, since they cost $76. I also noticed the proliferation of electronic signature terminals to speed up credit card purchases, and what looks like a new policy of not requiring any signature at all for retail purchases under $15. All in the interest of making those cash registers turn faster.

One retail innovation that hasn't taken off yet in North America is stored value, either in the form of credit cards or on your cellphone. Toronto based firm Dexit Inc. has been plugging away at the stored-value market, using RFID tags like the ones you wave at gas pumps.

Despite ambitious plans to become like Hong Kong's wildly successful Octopus card, which can even be used to buy bottles of wine, Dexit has struggled in the electronic payments world. Last month, the company announced a new name, a new CEO (and lead investor) and a new focus. Dexit Hosted Solutions will now work with merchants on branded gift cards, which they claim was an $18-billion market in the U.S. in the 2005 holiday season alone.

They also plan to offer features such as direct messaging to consumers' e-mail accounts, PDAs, cellphones or pagers.

Some pundits feel the day will come when we'll have to pay admission to stores, because they will actually be museums and showrooms where we touch and feel the products we're going to go purchase online. Indeed, Sony has tried just such a facility in San Francisco, at Sony Metreon, a showcase for Sony products where sales are low-key and infrequent.

Innovations like what Ralph Lauren, Dexit, and yes, even the New York City Transit Authority are doing point the way to the probable future of retail - an interesting hybrid of high tech, low tech, credit cards and other forms of plastic.

If anything is going away in retail, it will probably be cold, hard cash.

(Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)