Is spirit lost in cyberspace?

Dreams of an egalitarian, people-driven Internet are being trampled by ruthless corporate hegemons who will not stop until they’ve built the Web into a giant Babylon of mindless commerce.

Translation: Online shopping is better than ever!

If you did even a little of your holiday gift buying online, you know that doing it from your desk beats the madness of a “physical” shopping spree on just about every count -- especially in L.A.

Growing up in Massachusetts, Heather Sabin used to hit the mall with friends or family and make a festive day out of seasonal shopping. But that was another century. “Now that I live out here, it’s like, forget it,” said the 35-year-old film archivist, who lives in Hollywood. “It’s just miserable, the idea of going to the mall and fighting the traffic. You can get such good deals and free shipping when you do it online, so it just seems crazy not to.”

If they haven’t made a National Lampoon movie about the Murphy’s law-riddled process that is modern Christmas shopping, they should. Open with a shot of the antihero backing out of his driveway at 4 a.m., only to find that the bumper-to-bumper traffic begins around the corner. Then his hypothermically long walk from a far-flung parking spot to the entrance of Wal-mart. He is injured in a Pamplona-style bull run through the aisle but retrieves the doll. And we end with the tears of a child whose defective Elmo, once tickled, never stops its insane cackling.

Avoiding all these hassles may be why those who have forsworn brick-and-mortar venues seem so serene.

Nayer Khazeni, 34, was nowhere near a parking lot last weekend. Having spent three hours online buying music, book and spa gift certificates for friends and family, the San Francisco medical scientist promptly took off on a vacation to Peru.

The best part of online shopping? “I can do it on my own time,” Khazeni wrote in an e-mail. The Internet never closes, so she could shop during breaks at the hospital, “even if that’s in the middle of the night.”

With the nation’s traditionally profligate spending habits stuffed in a mattress this year, retail sales are sagging both online and off. But beneath that morose trend lies another more permanent one: More people than ever are shopping from their desks.

During the online retail industry’s megaweek that began with “Cyber Monday” earlier this month, Web tracking service comScore found the number of online shoppers hit 36 million, 14% more than during that period last year.

“My gut feeling is that most of what we’re seeing is people shifting from buying in stores to buying online,” said Stephen Baker, an analyst at the NPD Group in New York, a market research firm which found that holiday e-commerce sales of technology products like TVs, computers and cameras were up nearly 20% during the early part of the season.

Sabin, a kind of e-commerce prodigy, divided her time among EBay, LL Bean, givetix.com (movie tickets), alibris.com (old books), and even hawaiian-tropical-flowers.com (for grandma). But her destination of choice is Amazon.com.

Sabin is a particular fan of Amazon’s product reviews, which let users peruse the experiences of people who have bought this TV or that one, rather than depending on a store clerk’s talking points. Amazon’s other gifting innovation is its “wish list” function. “I love that aspect of it,” Sabin said, “because you can get people something they actually want.”

Her boyfriend’s wish list contains 58 items ranked by priority, including a Turkish coffee set (medium), a DVD of “Yellow Submarine” (high) and “Into Hot Air,” a novel by Chris Elliott(highest).

Amazon doesn’t even sell the Turkish coffee set -- but in a bid to become the leader in one-stop wish-listing, the company has made its list “universal,” enabling users to add products from any site.

Some traditionalists feel that all this automation of gift-giving takes the magic out of it. It’s supposed to be the thought that counts . . . but if you can do most of it without thinking, what’s the point?

Natalie Kim, 42, of Long Beach said the element of serendipity you get from wandering the aisles can’t be reproduced online. “I tried typing in ‘something special’ once and I didn’t have any luck.”

It’s true that the Internet is perfect when you know exactly what you’re looking for -- it’s built on instant search technology, after all. But when it comes to effortless browsing, strolling up and down the aisles is still a sight easier than slogging through dozens of pages of “suggested” products.

On the other hand, maybe it’s just a matter of knowing where you’re going. Aubrey Sabala, a marketing professional at a San Francisco Web firm, managed to find gifts for 10 people at Amazon, Pottery Barn, the Gap and Banana Republic. She even made custom gift cards and calendars from material she bought at Etsy, an arts and crafts site.

“I’m like the girl that hates to shop,” she said.

Apparently she means the old fashioned kind.

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david.sarno@latimes.com