Technology develops at such a ridiculous rate of speed that almost immediately after you buy some new gear, there’s a much greater and far upgraded version of the same tech. But sometimes instead of developing up to the tech we know now, there are big leaps that leave our heads spinning. There is also tech that appears in the background that we never know is there until it goes.
1) Microsoft Soapbox – Microsoft’s answer to YouTube that was supposed to enhance the known but rarely used MSN Video. It’s been running for about 3 years now and has now been shut down due to a lack of interest. I don’t think a lack of interest was to blame, it’s been so poorly marketed that I didn’t even know it existed until I heard the report of it’s death last night.
2) Flash Drive Capacity – The largest capacity flash drive that I’ve ever heard of is 64GB, but now Kingston has just announced a 256GB capacity drive. If this follows the increasing capacity of flash drives a few years ago back in the days of the megabyte (64-128-256) then haven’t we skipped a step here?
3) Gadgets to do stuff that we now have app’s for – remember the days before we used to put a lower case i at the beginning of everything? No, me neither. BUT believe it or not before iPint, we had Pints. Before iPhoto, we had Photos, before iCompass, we had Compasses, Spirit Levels, Pets and all manner of witchcraft that existed on their OWN gadget before we crammed them all into an iPhone. Primitive I know but it seemed to work.
4) Laserdisc – Ok, most people who are even vaguely into technology would’ve heard of laserdiscs, for the rest, Laserdiscs were essentially early DVDs introduced in the mid-70s that were about 8x the size, the vinyl record of DVDs as it were (I would love to see someone do a film remix using a laserdisc, if it were possible) that fell flat on it’s face and failed to VHS. Apparentely, the consumer tech market is all about form factor, just as DVDs were smaller and easier to carry than VHS, so too were VHS far smaller and easier than Laserdisc. I suppose that explains netbooks.
5) eBooks on computers – So we went from primitive books on a page to audiobooks, then (arguably) took a step back and put them back into words but digitally on ebooks, specifically on readers such as the Amazon Kindle or the Sony eReader. Thing is there was never any particular or best known service that put ebooks on the interwebs just for computers, of course there were (and still are) sites that publish books but it was never as popularised or marketed as the other forms I’ve mentioned, of course we’re developing back along the old lines with the Kindle 2 having a function of reading the book you’ve downloaded aloud. What’s next?
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1910868
I’m all for progress, but let’s not invent everything all at once eh. Save some for future generations.