Interesting piece in today's New York Times about how in some retail outlets, DVDs are outselling CDs. Storage media - of any kind - will always continue to be superceded by whatever the next most effective means of archiving might be. The challenge for those who produce the content is to make sure customers will pay for both the songs and some means of storing, recalling and sharing them.
The next watershed will obviously be the mass acceptance of recordable DVD, which looks like it will coexist alongside digital storage for a while before the next technological leap means consumers will pay again to upgrade content they already own. It's probably a short step to some form of holographic, 3D-type display, with an experiential element to the content; an ever-closer marriage of, say, movie and video-game, where the viewer's activity and choices determine the outcome (from a pre-shot raft of six or seven different plot paths).
But is the public ready yet for that sort of advance? Isn't there a case - particularly an economic one in the current climate - of urging a technological pause, at least long enough for people to get used to the last revolutionary piece of hardware? There was a nice cartoon in the Sunday Times magazine today where a trendy is bemoaning the fact that he simply dosen't have enough CDs to fill his I-Pod...
I recently decided against getting a picture messaging cellphone, partly because I honestly couldn't be bothered. Now I'm regretting it slightly, as I have a feeling that the mobile operators are pushing it so hard it will be an important part of the new communications sphere, and I should see what all the fuss is about.
One of the reasons I held back was that I didn't feel like investing the time to get to know how to use it, since I didn't think I'd use it enough to quickly become intuitively familiar with it. It was almost like a technological "exhaling"; before again leaping in to do battle with yet more expensive crap. Either that, or I'm just getting too old for all this and don't want to surround myself with any more complexities. Who knows?
Check out Gizmodo, the gadget weblog, and see what I mean. All that great stuff - only so many braincells to assimilate it all.
Comment?
The next watershed will obviously be the mass acceptance of recordable DVD, which looks like it will coexist alongside digital storage for a while before the next technological leap means consumers will pay again to upgrade content they already own. It's probably a short step to some form of holographic, 3D-type display, with an experiential element to the content; an ever-closer marriage of, say, movie and video-game, where the viewer's activity and choices determine the outcome (from a pre-shot raft of six or seven different plot paths).
But is the public ready yet for that sort of advance? Isn't there a case - particularly an economic one in the current climate - of urging a technological pause, at least long enough for people to get used to the last revolutionary piece of hardware? There was a nice cartoon in the Sunday Times magazine today where a trendy is bemoaning the fact that he simply dosen't have enough CDs to fill his I-Pod...
I recently decided against getting a picture messaging cellphone, partly because I honestly couldn't be bothered. Now I'm regretting it slightly, as I have a feeling that the mobile operators are pushing it so hard it will be an important part of the new communications sphere, and I should see what all the fuss is about.
One of the reasons I held back was that I didn't feel like investing the time to get to know how to use it, since I didn't think I'd use it enough to quickly become intuitively familiar with it. It was almost like a technological "exhaling"; before again leaping in to do battle with yet more expensive crap. Either that, or I'm just getting too old for all this and don't want to surround myself with any more complexities. Who knows?
Check out Gizmodo, the gadget weblog, and see what I mean. All that great stuff - only so many braincells to assimilate it all.
Comment?
posted by Steve at 11:07 PM
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