Technology: No Longer Outliving People

I recently was thinking about how fast things are changing these days and it all started with the thought of records...there are already grown people that have never owned or even heard a record being played.  Soon, there will be those that will have never heard of or owned a cassette and next up is the CD/DVD.

I amazed myself and, as usual, realize how old I am getting, because not only did I own records, cassettes and cd's, but I also was totally into the 8 track era as well..which was very short-lived.  I then begin to think about all the things that at one time was a "staple" in America and has now all but faded away...like old media formats like the record and cassettes. 

The newspaper...an industry that at one time was a giant in America...dictating public opinion.  Fifteen years ago a person would have laughed at you if you said that a successful newspaper's days were numbered, but that is more fact than fiction today.  Does anyone really think a newspaper, like today's, is actually going to exist? 

Television will be next.  First will be the local affiliates to slowly disappear.  The networks really can't afford to have affiliates any more and they really don't need them either.  The affiliate was needed in the early days of television because it was the only way to get your network signal to people...now with satellites and the internet an affiliate is merely a pass-through in today's world.  Affiliate's have also lost a lot of their luster...at one time your local ABC, NBC or CBS station would bring you coverage of local events and because there were only 8 channels available, they got huge ratings (locally).  Now with cable and satellite television, local programming looks like...well, local programming...cheap.  And the affiliates themselves aren't doing them selves any service ... they fill their available air time with low-budget syndicated programs or just take the easy route and air infomercials.  If/when the networks cut their affiliates, they will quickly evaporate.  Large market stations may be able to continue if they had a profit making news department or develop other programming ... which was the old model that has been abandoned...but I would bet that small markets would have close to no surviving affiliates if the network cut it's ties with them.

The internet is obviously the new frontier which is quickly ruining many "mainstay" businesses in America...like the newspaper and television.  But the real point of this post was to just reflect on how, at one time, technological advances would last several generations before it would be replaced but now, in just my lifetime, I have seen the success and demise of so many industries when, at the height of their popularity, a person couldn't even phantom the extinction of it, but now is all but completely gone. And what totally blows my mind is the things they would teach me in school that weren't even relevant soon afterwords or even by the time I was done with school would already be obsolete...

Things like I learned typing, when I was 15 in school on a typewriter...it was at least electric, but I can totally recall how to format typing a letter, how to figure out how to center a heading and so on...by the time I was in college, 3 years late, I had a computer that did all that.  In school we were taught BASIC program language, but were told up front it wasn't to teach us how to program a computer but to teach us how a computer thinks...BASIC program language was around for maybe 3 years and became obsolete.

I am just amazed at how in my lifetime I will have seen so many things come and go...and not just go, become totally obsolete...