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"...a lot of people find adventure on the Internet. That's their idea of being interactive. My idea of being interactive is going on out and doing it on the street."
- Harlan Ellison

Transo  
  Teleportation of objects and personnel, used as the basis for "Trading Post" stores across the planet.  

This is one of those great Simak stories that never go out of style. In the book, human travelers are able to bring back alien technologies from distant worlds. One of them is a workable teleportation system.

The back door opened to his knock and they walked into the back room of the Trading Post.

Up near the door that went into the front part of the store stood a massive box-like structure, and Blaine, although he'd never seen one, recognized it immediately as a transo -- the matter transference machine which made the vast network of Trading Posts stretched around the globe an economic possibility. Through that box could come, with a moment's notice, any of the merchandise for which any of the thousands of retail outlets might find itself in need.

Technovelgy from Time is the Simplest Thing, by Clifford Simak.
Published by Doubleday in 1961
Additional resources -

One of the interesting themes explored repeatedly in the book is the effect that advanced alien technologies have on Earth economic systems. In our current era of globalization, the U.S. is encountering the effects of great technologies developed in other parts of the world.

For example, Europeans demanded that cell phones work in all of the countries of the European Union. As a result, they learned to have rigorous standards; phone companies met those standards. And that's how Nokia, a Finnish company, came to be a major player in world cell phone technology.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Time is the Simplest Thing
  More Ideas and Technology by Clifford Simak
  Tech news articles related to Time is the Simplest Thing
  Tech news articles related to works by Clifford Simak

Transo-related news articles:
  - Deterministic Quantum-State Teleportation Achieved With High Fidelity

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