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Tech Zombies: 6 Technologies That Don't Know They're Dead
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Some technologies are like a Tyrannosaurus running down the highway (without the awesome). They made sense once and now they're hideously out of place, carried only by momentum as they stumble toward their inevitable date with the sixteen-wheeler of Progress. But, like the T-Rex, they seem intent on doing as much damage as they can until then. #6.
Phone Books
An incredible 615 million phone books were printed last year, most of which were used to replace missing legs on sofas or were ripped apart in Youtube videos. About another million tons of these useless blocks will be shipped out to households and offices next year, where an increasing number will make a U Turn at the front porch and head to the landfill without ever being opened. William Rathke, an anthropologist who studies garbage, says you can "dig a trench through a landfill and you will see layers of phone books like geographical strata or layers of cake." Rathke, who despite digging through trash for a living has his Ph.D. from Harvard, claims phone books account for about 10-30% of the trash at your local dump.
In an era when you can fit many gigabytes onto a device small enough to be swallowed by a cat and even your local bait shop has a website, phone companies still want us to find phone numbers the same way we did 100 years ago: by dragging out a bulky, ten-pound list printed on dead trees.
Why are they still around?
But even though it reaches twice as many homes as the Super Bowl, does it get past the doorstep of those homes anymore? Are there really $13.9 billion worth of people using them? Well yes, if you believe the phone companies, and the people they've paid to conduct surveys. And in an industry with no sales figures (because nobody asked for the damn things in the first place) how else are you going to track who actually uses them? Well there is one way. You could go hunting around in landfills to see if the phone books were thrown away all at once right when everyone got them, creating entire layers of phone book in the earth. You know, like a cake? But who's bat shit crazy enough to do something like that?
#5.
MP3 Players
No sooner than we celebrate the death of the CD, its killer may be the next one in the grave. We're talking about the iPod (and its countless imitators) which is seeing falling sales for the first time in its short life. But don't feel sorry for Apple, the reason for the MP3 player slide is that cell phones (including their own iPhone) make perfectly good MP3 players. Selling someone an iPod now is like selling a feces gun to a monkey; he doesn't need it.
Why are they still around?
For instance, there are iPods that can hold up to 40,000 songs now (which we believe is more songs than actually exist) and the iPhone "only" has room for about 3,500. But since the average user hasn't stolen anywhere near that many songs anyway, fewer and fewer are seeing the point of carrying around a separate device. It's true the iPod still has some fashion appeal, and Apple continues to crank out versions with new features (including the iPod Touch, which seems to have been designed as an iPhone that you can't call people with). But it's a hopeless battle, since some of us just don't have the extra pocket. That won't get any better with time, since experts believe spandex jumpsuits are the future.
As processors and memory get exponentially smaller and smaller, the cell phone will swallow up every device in the home. By 2020 you won't even need a separate computer or laptop. By 2040 cell phones will be in charge of the planet, and our job will just be to tote them around from place to place so they can have meetings with each other. #4.
DVDs
After ten years we're finally seeing dropping DVD sales. Considering movies can already be downloaded onto set-top boxes on a pay-per-view basis, and can be downloaded over the internet on a pay-nothing-per-view basis, it's a wonder it took this long. Any economists reading may recognize that combination of risk factors and symptoms the same way doctors recognize coughing, shortness of breath and a constellation of funny-shapes on a chest X-ray. Companies like Sony would like to think the dip is due to people getting all excited about Bluray, but while Bluray sales have inched along, movie downloads have doubled. Meanwhile Netflix has made a deal with Microsoft so that anyone who owns an XBox 360 can get a subscription to download Netflix movies, physical media be damned.
Why are they still around?
For example, The Sopranos box set planned for later this year will cost four hundred dollars. This officially makes the studio better at criminal extortion than the characters on the DVDs. Unless they include a special "real ending" as an extra, we're guessing it won't be worth it.
The big question at this point is if Bluray ever takes off, since it's offering something that can't be downloaded (or not easily anyway--an HD movie takes an entire day to download on most connections). So until our internet connections improve, sellers of movies on disc will have to depend on the market segment willing to pay to see every speck of dust on Batman's suit. |
209 Comments
I agree with most of this. However, books, actual books, will never go out of style, simply because it puts less eye strain on you to read words on paper than on a screen. It's true.
Of course, I'm talking about REAL books, not magazines, catalogs and so on. Those could stand to die.
And games on disc? They NEED to die, for the good of the industry. Wal-Mart dictates what games can and cannot be made now (don't believe me? http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_40/241-Wal-Mart-Rules ), downloaded-only games have a chance of changing that.
I feel sorry for the phonebooks :(
I think falling iPod and DVD sales may just be due to the struggling economy. But what do I know?
Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to have DSL, and Xbox 360 and all the games I effing want, but like quite a bit of other people, I can't afford said tech. BTW- I'm only sixteen so please don't start with the, "Do something with your life, and you'll make money." stuff. thanks
Umm, Fangarius, it may not be that people are willing to pay for the dead technology, but instead AREN'T willing to pay for the highly overpriced new technology that does pretty much the same damn thing.
The current state of affairs is not the "be all, end all". Th fact is, physical media, physical reference, physical everything will exist no matter what. We will never as a society move to a fully digital, fully electronic age because as human beings, we are more comfortable with something that fits in our hands, not our hard drives. If I have a movie on my hard drive, it can be corrupted, a virus can mess it up or delete it, any number of problems could arise. But if I have a physical piece of media (dvd, bluray or what have you), all I have to do is maintain that piece, any damage can be prevented by my actions.
Same goes for money, if all of your money is in a bank, on a computer, through a card, what happens when the bank screws up? What if someone hacks your account? Is it just "too bad"? What about children who aren't old enough to have a bank account? Are they just up a creek until they can get their card? The lack of physical properties are a logistical nightmare. Non-physical media and the like are new, helpful technology, but they are not a full replacement for the physical world.
This looks like more of a Dying Technology then a Dead Technology That Wont Admit It article, and it also appears to be in reverse order.
:P
I still prefer disk games for my consoles. Downloading them takes up too much hard drive space, and I both hate the point system, and can't be bothered to convert my cash into it.
Mp3 players? Video game discs? Cash money? I guess food, clothing, housing, and toilets will all become outdated technologies within a brief period of time too, since you can have access to all of those things digitally, sort of, maybe.
Man, fuck physical reality, 1s and 0s uber alles!
oops, I mean available
"the iPod (and its countless imitators)"
That's funny. The iPod is the original imitator, as it was not the first MP3 player, and it's interface was stolen from Creative Labs.
Also, I rather like my MP3 player/video player. It holds more files than any phone availible, and I don't have to sign a stupid/unfair contract to use it.
Also, I really hope cash never goes away. I love money, and I love counting it. A plastic card just isn't the same.
I know that was brought up, and could have probably just quoted the actual article, but for fuck's sake, that's going to STILL be a pressing problem for anything in the future, and people in the comments still fight against it.
Also, the game industry would probably melt if there was no hard copies being sold. Even video games that sold well and are enjoyed on a console that get ported to the PC have shitty sales, and the biggest reason for that isn't that people that have PCs already got it for the console, but because it's just about pirated right away. If there wasn't even a disc to ever get and everything was to be downloaded, then why not just download from this site over here, the free one?
i don't have a credit card or even my own bank account. how am i supposed to by things.
p.s. i am only 16
One commonality I've noticed with these Tech Zombies happens to be economic driven.
Think about it, though we possess the technology for replacing every item mentioned here, they stay in existence due to the fact they still sell.
Sure, I'm not stupid, I know eventually, consoles will no longer require cd, SD Card or some sort of software input. Everything will be downloaded, putting stores like GameStop and GameCrazy out of business.
But for now, since there are still people willing to spend a few bucks on dead technology, it'll still be supported without question.
Why do you think they STILL produce turntables or make CD/Cassette Tape hybrids, even though you can no longer find vinyl records or cassettes in local stores anymore?
woah. that's like a pool of cd's there. ;p
uhm... i know where the phone books go. to my living room under the coffee table, we have way too many. im surprised the floor hasn't fallen through yet!
but people who play MMO's sit in their house all day so making the games downloadable prevents them from having to go outside and talk to someone in person. Hard copies arent dead the companies just provide a way for you to avoid an awkward social moment or getting a sunburn on a cloudy day
You seem to have forgotten that us poor schmucks with Macs cannot use most of the movie download services. No Amazon UnBox or Instant Netflix for us. Long Live DVD!!!
I'm guessing most of the people protesting that hard copies of video games ARE NOT DEAD are about 15 and only play PS2/3 and 360. Do none of you folks own top-end PCs, and play MMOs? Physical media has been dead for several years, there. Most MMOs don't even deal with disks anymore, or mail order or shelf space in Best Buy or any of that shit. Go into a game store and you see hardly any shelf space for PC games....which has led some dumbasses in the R0X0RZ console game world to conclude that PC gaming is DED, LULZ!!!1111!!!! It's not, there are tens of millions of folks sitting on our fat asses and killing trolls or blasting spaceships every night, and we don't have jack shit cluttering up our game rooms. And if the computer dies when the cat pisses through the exhaust fan, so what? Log into your account and download it again, no problem. Even a large game should only take an hour or two if you have your shit set up correctly, and you can just spend that time browsing porn sites. So catch on to the way things are done, youngsters!
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Evil_Kiwi
Come to think of it, why don't they just make it so that your income is automatically charged to your credit card, and make it so you can't spend more than you have? Ohhh, that's right. The credit card companies *want* your money...