By Alex Mandossian
In the information world, the technology that wins in the consumer market is always the one that is the most user-friendly. The audio tape took the place of the eight track tape. It was a lot less bulky.
Then the CD made the audio cassette obsolete. CDs are sleeker, lighter, more flexible, and cheaper to produce. You can take CDs with you everywhere and play them in CD players at home or in the car and on laptops.
Encyclopedia Britannica′s 32 volume set of books became obsolete when Encarta came out with a CD that did almost the same thing and at a fraction of the cost.
The DVD made the CD more powerful because it added the visual component.
The next phase is the elimination of the physical product – the CD – altogether. Now we can just download information from the Internet onto a hard drive on our computer or media player and take it with us.
I believe that podcasting will eventually make the DVD and the CD obsolete. People would rather walk around with one video or audio media player than carry a dozen or more CDs.
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About Alex Mandossian
