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'Dead Media' Never Really Die
joabj writes "A streaming music service was available 100 years ago by telephone, through the Teleharmonium. A primitive version of Photoshopping was possible with Black Mirrors in the 18th century. While technologies and media platforms go obsolete at an ever more rapid pace, the ideas they engender never really die. They get absorbed by newer technologies, or are at least preserved by hobbyists (carrier pigeons) or niche markets (Morse Code), argued NYU postdoctoral researcher Finn Brunton at the USENIX conference. Myself, I'm waiting for an update to the visual cortex-stimulating Dream Machines of the 1960s."
Brunton questioned whether any media is "truly dead," except in rare cases, such as the Rongorongo tablets found at Easter Island, which no one now knows how to read or even decipher the reason they were created.
This whole 4 page article came off as a bunch of gum flapping over semantics. If I say something is a “dead technology”, I generally mean that very few people are using it.. not that it has completely disappeared from the face of the earth. I think the same is true of most people. Was the whole point of this to say that for most technologies, someone, somewhere, is still using it? If so it took a long damn time to make that point.
Also the fact that an older technology is somehow embodied in the new technology that supersedes it is a pretty damn obvious statement. We invent new things to do old things in a better way. Of _course_ my word processor incorporates the same concepts of the typewriter, it was designed to be a replacement for it!
This whole 4 page article came off as a bunch of gum flapping over semantics.
Perhaps we can define a "dead" technology as one that no longer enjoys economies of scale. Hobbyists and niche markets often pay a premium for the technologies they use.
Which brings me to another question: Often participatory media die and are replaced with consumer media. For example, video game consoles replaced 8-bit microcomputers with TV output, Compact Disc replaced cassette, DVD replaced VHS, and walled-garden tablets have begun to replace laptop computers. These media create a barrier between those who can produce and those who can only consume, and one must pay dearly to surmount this barrier.