“Enough, my dear, is never enough”
- Oscar Wilde
I bought an iPod years ago with a grand vision in mind, to get rid of every previous format and have my entire musical life on that tiny sliver of technology. But as I started converting a few CDs I saw that vision fade like a dream on waking. I suddenly understood that transferring all those disks and tapes and albums would take many lifetimes. Not to mention the whole new world of iTunes to download.
I also found that I could not quite bring myself to throw out the older stuff. What if the iPod failed, what if it got lost, what if I was stranded in my living room with access only to my old stereo?
So now in addition to all those audio tapes, CDs, and vinyl albums, I ended up with the iPod with all the new digital music. Not to mention the radio, the stations on the Web, and the fifty cable music channels.
I should have known that would happen.
Audio tapes themselves did not allow me to throw out LPs; CDs did not replace the tapes; the iPod would not clean house either. The iPad won't displace a thing. And don’t get me started on movies with all our old VHS tapes, new DVDs, Netflix deliveries, hundreds of movie channels, and online streaming video.
Our sense of comfort has not been wrecked simply by the speed of change. The profusion of it is just as disorienting. Unlike other revolutions, the digital one reaches into every cranny of our crammed lives, giving us more choices to make than ever before with all the attendant anxiety. All this because the new never seems to replace the old but merely piles on top like so much gizmotic sediment.
This struggle is not just taking place in my living room.
The question of how and whether new technologies supplant older ones and the proliferation of stuff in general affects investments worldwide, as well as our investment in progress. The issue has been raised again between TV and the Web. The right guess will determine the value of stock portfolios for years. And yet, in the near future, it seems obvious to me which one will triumph. I fact, I can guarantee my choice based on two principles of technology.
The first is The Principle of Underlap.
All technological change goes through a redundant period in which the new co-exists with the old. The telephone, for example, was in widespread use by the late 1880s but it did not immediately replace the telegraph which was invented forty years earlier. In fact, telegraphy was still popular all the way to World War II because it offered something the phone could not…the delivered messages could be given directly to a person rather than to a machine. In the same way, Polaroids did not replace 35mm film because the older technology had the edge in reproduction and flexibility. Television and the motion pictures futurists were sure they would overwhelm have already co-existed for almost 60 years for a simple reason…every format has its strengths. TV is one thing but there is nothing like going to the movies. Typewriters lasted 20 years into the age of the word processor because you could fill out forms; mimeo machines underlapped the dry-copier by a decade.
The second guideline for my prediction comes from The Principle of ReVision. In an age of industrial capitalism, nothing is made once. Every product is re-copied, re-branded, re-tooled, re-marketed. This leads to a new consumer stress syndrome in reaction to how to choose, which to select, what to buy, which is better.
Chronic profusia.
An inflammation of alternatives resulting in a rash of indecision.
I once saw an exhibit that displayed a hundred hammers starting with a rock, going through a doctor's reflex tester and a claw shop hammer all the way to a railroad mallet. And I am sure they missed plenty. The fact that each invention is only a partial solution for a temporary situation forces us to keep improving and remaking. If any technode worked perfectly for all time on any one problem, it would never change. Like the shark, the first stab would be the right one and there would be no need for further iterations.
We are not sharks; we are techumans and so we keep adjusting to our adjustments and fill the world with stuff.
In 1914, Henry Ford boasted that you could get his new-fangled Model T in any color as long as it was black. Less than twenty months later, that one model was available in 9 colors. By 1923 there were eighty different models of cars on the American market, every single one in a wide variety of colors.
Today of course, profusia reigns across the Gizmos both physical and virtual.
So which technology am I betting on between TV and the Web? The answer is obvious...both. Between Underlap and ReVision I am sure that everything will happen all at once for maximum profusia.
And if I am right in my investments, I may even be able to afford all the new stuff I am going to need, cozy in the knowledge that nothing will get thrown out to make room for it.
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