Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 3:50 PM by Gene

Meantime, as ever more self-obsoleting electronic JUNK ACCRETES in our LIVING ROOMS:

For the foreseeable future, the only certainty is that all these mighty companies will continue to preach interoperability while pursuing proprietary hegemony. This could lead to several scenarios. One is that one company, or camp, wins. The digital home, unified by the winner's standards, might then become a reality in the mass market. For this to happen, however, several companies and industries would first have to make huge strategic mistakes, and consumers would have to accede, in effect, to a repeat of the "Wintel" (Windows and Intel) near monopoly in the PC industry today.

Another possibility is that the technology wars end with a truce, perhaps brokered by industry consortia that push open standards. This would be infinitely preferable for consumers and would probably make the digital home a reality much sooner, since it would mean that consumers could shop incrementally for new gadgets, all of which will fit with the others. The catch for providers is that this is much less exciting for their own bottom lines.

There is a third possibility. This is that the wars continue, but consumers continue not to care. As John Barrett, research director at Parks Associates, says, "it seems that we've concocted a new variant of the ‘paperless' office." This, you recall, was the consensus a decade or so ago among technophiles (but almost nobody else), that computer technology would save our forests by freeing us from having to read and write on paper. Today's variant, says Mr Barrett, is "no more tapes, CDs, DVDs, discs." In other words, expect them to be around for a very long time to come.

(Linked, oddly enough, on Slashdot, where the true believers don't seem to care.)