The Ecosystem of Old Technologies

Much of what we blog about here is about how new technology is adopted and consumed, and how that affects older technologies. I guess the folks at The New York Times have been reading because they basically took that theme and fleshed into a 15-inch story instead of ongoing blog ethos.

This article deals with how old techs evolve when they are overtaken by new techs. One source in the story even compares it to the evolution of ecosystems, a spot-on analogy. For example, the Beta VCR is often considered one of the great recent tech blunders as it failed to adapt and was overtaken by VHS. But Beta disappeared only in the consumer market. In the B2B world, Beta was often used by TV stations and, I believe, still is in some places.