Ólafur Andri Ragnarsson | Technology Trends

The Technology Death List

One thing I do while preparing for my annual Technology Future Trends in my New Technology course, is to look at technology that is dying. Of course technology never actually dies. As Hedy Lamarr said, “Technology is forever”, but at some point one technology starts to be replaced by another technology and drops out of the mainstream. When exploring technological trends, observing such transformations is one of the ways to see changes and potential disruptions to businesses and industries.

So here is my current Technology Death List:

CD-ROM: This can apply to DVDs as well. It’s important to understand that the CD is a content distribution technology. It is not the content. People sometime confuse this technology with music which is far from dying. The trend here is that CDs and DVDs are being replaced by on-line distribution. The problem for the music industry is that the payment is associated with the content distribution method. This is causing disruption in the industry. So if anybody wondered why there are no lines at the stores for buying Blu-Ray players, we must realize that using plastic discs to distribute content is competing with on-line Internet content distribution.

Hard-disk: This is not obvious but we might see Solid State Memory replace mechanical hard disks. SSMs are approaching the same price range and if they are much faster, smaller and potentially cheaper we will see them become de facto in devices. This has an interesting implication in architecture and design of software programs as many design patterns are designed around latencies in disk access. Another point is that with faster SSM fewer disks are needed in a systems with high throughput requirements.

Adapters: Image you could by a phone with batteries that can last for months or years. It might be sometime for this but in the meanwhile, charging wirelessly will likely take of leaving the stupid adapter useless.

Newspapers: Delivering news on dead trees seems to have problems. There are many news on troubled newspapers. Subscription is going down as people are turning to the Internet for news and articles. At the same time, devices like Kindle and the Sony reader seem to be picking up.

Closed model Cell Phones: Cell phones are going though a disruptive phase. The trend is that cell phone are becoming more like a small PC. This is very much in line with the Moore’s law. According to antoher law, Metcalfe’s law, these devices will connect to the same network, the Internet. Whatever the technology used to carry voice or data, it will be IP based. All these changes will cause disruption for the phone companies and it migth be difficult for them to keep metering charges for voice and messaging.

The Web at Twenty

The World Wide Web turned 20 this month. At 20 it’s worth reflecting on why the Web did prevail as it did. It was far from obvious that the web would succeed. Microsoft, CompuServ and others had plans for proprietary networks, usually calling them “Information Superhighways”.

The WWW succeeded due to two reasons in my mind. First was simplicity. The HTTP protocol is relatively simple protocol and ignored problems such as back-linking (later researched by the Google founders).

Second was the generic (or maybe generative) nature of the web. Anybody can create applications, and the list is long due to the countless ideas out there. The proprietary networks would never have done anything similar.

But at 20 the interesting part is this: if we compare the web with the car, we’re at 1905. Imagine cars from 1905 and remember Ford is starting out around this time. I think the web is in its early stages and that we are just beginning.

So, who goes to the Video Rental Store anymore?

videostore — Inside a video store in Islamabad, Pakistan (source: Wikipedia Commons by Executioner)

One of the topics in my New Technology course is changes in movie distribution due to digital content and the Internet. This is an example of disruption due to the global network. For years I have predicted that DVD movie rentals would decline as people adopt on-line stores. The change was slow and not noticeable until last year when something changed. The internet is finally chancing viewing in a dramatic way.

I did a small survey among my students. Here are the results:

Average number of hours watching TV per day: 1,6
Average number of times visiting cinema in one month: 0,75
Average number of times going to the Video Rental Store in one month: 0,19
Average number of on-line TV shows and movies watched in one month (streaming): 8,8. If we only count those that do streaming: 17,6
Average number of TV shows and movies downloading in one month: 17. If we only count those that do downloads: 24,6

So the conclusion is this: TV watching in the group in significantly below the average of 3 hours per day, video rentals are way down and the cinema is not very popular in this group. Only one person went more than 2 times to the cinema. Streaming and downloads on the other hand are more popular. This confirms that TV viewing is moving away from the traditional TV set and to the Internet.

In short, people don’t watch TV anymore. They watch the Internet. But then the TV is becoming one of the screens for STB and computers.

Note that this survey is based on small group and not to be taken as general trends. But it does represent an obvious trend. Video rentals are moving to the Internet.