Old technologies never die, they just dont get upgraded Mercurians - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Old technologies never die, they just don’t get upgraded Mercurians Jonathan Coopersmith Texas A&M University October 2007

Do technologies experience stages of grief? (1) Shock or Disbelief (2) Denial (3) Bargaining (4) Guilt (5) Anger (6) Depression (7) Acceptance and Hope (from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross On Death and Dying)

Indicators of decline • Economic trends Patterns of usage, sales Firms entering or leaving?

Expectations and perceptions • The future is elsewhere • Market research, predictions, and hype

Players • PTTs and telephone companies • Equipment providers • Specialized communication carriers • Wholesalers/retailers • Users

Telex

Reasons to keep telex • legality of correspondence • banking use • high reliability and omnipresence • ability to handle low quality circuits • relative cheapness • realtime dialogue

Changed environment International calling telephones 1983 - 370 million 1992 - 575 million US long-distance rates (cents/minute) 1983 69 1992 24

Bad data presentation

Fax on demand: preparing people for the web

Reasons to keep faxing • confirmed delivery • no viruses • ability to handle low quality circuits • legality of signatures • security of transmission • document formatting independent of software

1991 US email choices • 55 email networks • 15 electronic messaging services • 80 email software supplier (all fairly incompatible and requiring much effort to learn to use)

PCs (worldwide) 1991 130 million 2004 775 million Websites (worldwide) 1995 19,000 1997 1 million 2000 20 million 2006 100 million

Triumph of email & web • Search engine • Compatibility among systems • Finally as easy as faxing • File transfer