E-Commerce, E-Disputes, and E-Dispute Resolution: In the Shadow of "eBay Law"

A recent Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Steven Millhauser’s Martin Dressler,1 tells the story of Martin Dressler, an entrepreneur in the late Nineteenth century in New York City. Dressler makes his fortune in real estate, designing and constructing ever larger and more grandiose buildings in different areas of Manhattan.2 Each construction project is intended to be a statement about both design and technology and about employing what were then-emerging technologies such as electricity, in ways that provided inhabitants with an amazing array of resources in one place.3 His career culminates with a project he calls the Grand Cosmo, the most spectacular building ever built and described by an architecture critic as follows: