Changing paradigms in the world always interest me.
We all come into the world, and are faced with a bunch of preconceived ideas of how things work. It’s really, really easy to just kind of accept that this is how things are. In fact society as a whole tends to resist changes away from these beliefs.
As an example here, take the life blue print that society lays out for us:
1) Get born.
2) Live with parents / go to school till your 18.
3) Either find job, or go to college.
4) Find Spouse.
5) Get married.
6) Raise kids.
7) Retire
I think the movie, “Office Space” may have said it best here:
“Michael, we don’t have a lot of time on this earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements”
Anyhow…this is deviating from the topic, I had in mind…which as usual, tends to be more technical. The future is coming:
In the future…things are different; and I’m not talking about flying cars or other madness. We are on the cusp of abandoning physical media.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/27/editorial-apples-officially-over-the-optical-drive-for-better/
That’s huge, since physical media has been with me persionally since the 5.25 floppy disk. Yet, Apple believes that they are not necessary.
Similarly, software companies are no longer charging for software. This is mind blowing…I’m not just talking about ads in software (that just means that the advertiser is paying for your software use instead of you). I’m talking about, software being completely free. Two examples come to mind (they just happen to be both games): League of Legends and Age of Empires Online. Both games are totally free to install and play…however, the user gets the option of paying for premium content. It’s essentially asking the user how much they want to pay for software with $0 being a perfectly valid option. It’s what Microsoft did with Windows XP (Home or Professional?)…but for games.
Sometimes it’s obvious what the future will bring…like when I first saw internet streaming of movies / tv shows…I knew it was the future, and that physical media was on the way out. I didn’t see well produced quality software being made available at no cost to it’s users.
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