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. |
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Actually, some of this is pretty innacurate.
While phone companies are endlessly bragging about how their cellphones can go on the net and listen to music and wash your car for you, the reason computers, MP3 players and underpaid migrant workers still exist is because cellphones tend to suck at doing anything not related to being a flarking cellphone. Net connection is slow, web page format is either s****y or tiny and -lets face it- you can't illegally download music on phones.
And if the American goverment (I've no idea how other countries would react, seeing as how -personally speaking from a geographical standpoint- this is the 'important one') were to enforce any sort of card carrying, rationed dystopian society you can bet that the whole of the southern states, most of the liberal groups focused on independance and ALL the religious fanatics would rise up and riot. credit cards are one of those odd instances of American schitzophrenia; so long as nobody is really FORCING us to use them, we'll use them. The instant we have no toher choice but to conform, most of us will throw a hissy fit of epic proportions.
Besides, cash is useful. Credit cards can get melted/cracked in the wash (personal experience speaking), they can get lost, IDENTITY THEFT, corrupt credit organisations shoving it up the ass of the populace, the problems go on.
And as previously stated by DeadlyJerm: cash is anonymous.
I used to work at GameStop for a few years.
We were instructed to actively lie to our customers and manipulate "facts" to get you to pay more.
Sorry.
Phones-as-mp3-players don't have nearly enough space on them. I has 10,000 songs on my iPod right now, I don't want to have to juggle that and my gigs of videos, I'd rather have it in a convenient place. Why they don't just make a phone with a large amount of space is beyond me, but whatevs.
Also, f**k the "online" bullshit. If I buy a game, I want to have a physical copy of it. I don't want to risk things like PSN's online problem, where if you buy things online, if your playstation breaks you can't download it again, and in fact you can't even re-purchase it again. Screw that.
They also like to use evidence they find on torrent sites to back up the allegations of piracy. Which is in essence true, but not every download equals a lost sale; people will frequently download stuff and never view/play it, or play it for five minutes before deciding that it's a piece of crap and deleting it off their system to make room for more porn.
For example, I downloaded the haxx0red version of Red Faction: Guerrilla yesterday (since there was no demo on Steam) and installed it today. Got maybe 15 minutes into the game (after dealing with a small "bug" that forced you to use stereo sound if you weren't a big fan of nonstop extremely loud static) before figuring out that while the visuals were cool, the gameplay kinda sucked. Uninstalled it, deleted it, and boom, $50 saved.
By the same token, I downloaded the demo of Batman: Arkham Asylum on Steam when it came out, and played through it four times because it was so much damned fun. Never pre-ordered anything so fast in my life. Then I had to sit and salivate for two weeks waiting for them to release it, all the while resisting the urge to pirate it. Don't push your luck, game companies.
Hang on, from the link claiming 80-90% piracy on PC games, the proof was that console versions of CoD4 and Bioshock sold 5 times better on consoles? I see. So that follows the same borked logic the music industry is using which goes something like, "Sales aren't what they used to be when there was less free review of digital media, less ability to cherry pick the best bits and leave the majority of dross unsold and there's this piracy bogeyman here whom we can blame for everything since very few people have genuinely researched its economic effects and the couple of researchers who have (and have found that piracy actually increases sales of highest quality media) can just be ignored as crazy Europeans. HENCE PIRACY IS THE MOTHER OF ALL EVILS!!!111"
Could it be, game designers, that your PC games don't sell anywhere near as well as your consoles games not because everyone and their mother pirated Bioshock and CoD4, but because in order to play Bioshock at the graphical quality of a couple hundred dollar XBOX at release one would have to fork over upwards of a thousand dollars? Could it be that gamers with a PC capable of playing Bioshock on decent graphics generally already own an XBOX and thus have probably already bought the game before you release it for PC? No. No of course not. It's just piracy.
they could be last year's phone books getting turfed out when the new ones arrive...
#2: EB, anyone?
f*****g "Stealectronics" Boutique
I disagree about the mp3 players. Everyone I know has one and doesn't want to use up their cell phone battery (and thus being unable to use it as a, you know, PHONE) by using it as a player.
MasterBastard, could i join you? we might make it 3 or 4 months if we work together.
I ended up having to crawl to my grandmother for help in order to pay off all my credit cards or else i was facing bankruptcy (at the age of 22). i pointed out to bank of america that the interest rate they charged me for being late on a payment meant that if i paid the minimum (like auto-debited payments tend to do) that it wasn't actually enough to cover the monthly interest and therefore i was set-up to fail. then it reached it's limit and they began charging even more in fees. I will simply lay down and die if I'm forced into using a credit card.
Oh, and no fair about MP3 players- not all of us have iPhones or want them. I hate the idea of having 1 device responsible for so much. if it dies, i'm screwed. and, don't even say digital cameras are around because cell phones aren't "quite good enough". i dare your cell phone to go lens-to-lens with my Canon Digital Rebel XT. i'm biased after studying photography for 4 years, but still, i've never seen a cell phone produce an image comparable to even a typical budget digital camera.
Anyone who uses any third-party enhancements to existing games (Oblivion Script Extender, Morrowind Graphics Extender, and I Can't Think Of Any Game To Go Here That Isn't By Bethesda Softworks) will attest to the fact that yes, there are times when a disc is much, much better. Ugh, without my CD I'd be forced to play Morrowind in its original, obsolete form.
The day cash is completely eliminated for credit is the day I build a shack out in the woods, grow a beard, and hunt to subside (until I die about two months later). I've seen and heard of too many good people getting fucked in the ass by creditors. It's far too easy to be irresponsible with credit- and the consequences can ruin you like a m**********r. Eff that ess, my friends.
Honestly, it's not like cash is all that bad.
Sorry Cracked but you failed on this one. The reason sales are down has nothing to do with popularity but with the fact that more and more people are having less and less money to spend on things that are not food. In other words, it's the economy, stupid. And not everyone has amazing high speed internet access, even here in the US.
On a side note, I would never by a digital copy of a book. I love the smell and feel of a newly printed book and oddly enough, magazines.
Guys, really. Can't you just look a little beyond the US? Here in Argentina downloadable games are a pain in the ass since we don't have such high speed Internet connections. Plus, a real newspaper beats staring at the screen, always. I can take my newspaper to the pool, but I'd never do that with a laptop, for example.
Actually, video game sales are up
I don't agree with MP3 players. Just do a search. They don't like going above 16GB at this time. The iPod still triumphs with storage capacity, and my library is 92GB and growing.
I can only agree on the phone book article.
Ok the game discs will live for a long long long long and so on a so forth amount of time you would be surprised how many people still use discs.
There are people who still do not have an email address or use the internet. They have healthy, productive lives and don't have to rush to Facebook every five minutes to update their status.
I like to hook my ipod up to speakers in my living room if people come over. It would suck if the music was interrupted every time my phone would ring so I like having a separate phone/ipod. I also like physical books if I'm forced to travel since you don't have to turn them off during takeoff/landing or worry if the battery will last....
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The main problem I have with the games-on-disc becoming outdated is an issue of space and time. Considering, for example, that a PS3 game can be up to 50GB (though most are much smaller, I believe I've read most are more like 15-30GB or even less), that's a good deal of hard drive space if the idea is you download every game you buy (with a 250GB hard drive, that's about 8-16 games). Plus, it'd take some time to download each game, and it could easily be more of a hassle for consumers than just going to the store and then popping a disc in.
Also, it is of course true that as technology progresses, storage space always gets cheaper and download times faster, but at the same time new generations of games always use more space, so it'd pretty much always remain an issue.
That said, downloadable content is here to stay, but I don't see it going to far out of the current established realm of movies, expansion packs, and smaller stand-alone games (like the XBox's arcade and Wii's virtual console). I can't ever see it fully replacing the physical media, though.