Legal Research

Can we please stop the killing?

I have to support this plea from No Man's Land blog:

One trend in digital we should all try to avoid in 2010

"Please can we stop killing things?

Over the last few years we?ve been all guilty of new-technologies sensationalism. Our response to the overwhelming pace of change made us believe that emerging platforms and technologies will categorically and dramatically kill everything that was before them."

"Twitter is killing blogging!
Widgets will kill the homepage!
Second Life is killing Real Life!
Digital is killing advertising!
Yahoo pipes will kill the browser!
Google is killing Microsoft!
iGoogle is killing Newspapers!
Gaming is killing the cinema!
Books are a thing of the past!
Google Wave will kill Facebook!
Facebook is killing email!
Twitter is killing Facebook!
And now, the most recent hyperbole, straight from Twitter?s (AKA The Pulse) oven, I give you?.
Streams are killing the web page."

Guess what. it turns out that when human evolve and construct culture(s) they have some time-attention-alchemist-like qualities whereby old things are not being replaced with new stuff, they add to them. Sometimes they compete and sometime co-habit and complementary and together they evolve and we evolve. Honestly, we?re like every good parents - when we have a new baby we don?t stop loving the older one, we find time and make room in our hearts for both?;-)"

"Things do expand and contract, evolve and change but reality is more complex and is no where near the new-technologies massacres we read about every day."

"So for 2010, let?s try to avoid the trend of killing old things in favour of new things and live happily ever after?"

I have certainly particip'ated in my share of dead technology panels but I guess I'm sick of it now.

Can we all just evolve without extinction and great dying outs? Does every new techbology have to be a meteor and the rest of us dinosaurs?

Let's all try to reach the stage of sophistication that we should be at. Dead or thriving polarizations are just too simplistic - just to black and white.

Aren't we at the stage now where some more intelligence can be applied without too much hype?

Today I listened to my radio and some CD's and watched broadcast TV. I shopped in a brink and mortar bookstore. I didn't have to visit a graveyard to do so. OMG, today, I even read a print newspaper - two of 'em - and 2 yesterday too! And I really don't think I am a dino.

So I agree with the plea. Let's manage these technological evolutions like the professionals we are and not be so shallow. Let's be more Darwinian.

2012 is coming!

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on December 14, 2009 (boomark / email).