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Atari and TRS-80 Computers

Looking back on my career in the military, in private industry, as an entrepreneur and author, there's one maxim that repeatedly proves itself to be true.  One of the first people to point this out was bazillionaire Bill Gates. He said

"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”

Put another way, we almost always overestimate the impact of technology in the short term and underestimate it in the long term.  There's a popular corollary, which is not nearly as widely known, but I submit is equally true.  It states, that it is a very difficult and long term process to "eliminate" technology.

There is a direct relationship between the amount of money required to replace a legacy technology and the time required to replace it.  This relationship helps explain how some inferior low-cost or free technologies can quickly disrupt an industry.  When the cost to replace a technology approaches zero, the less features, quality, and over-all functionality people are willing to accept. However, even though, for example, ebooks may severely disrupt publishing, any prediction of the elimination of printed books is hogwash.

One of the biggest secrets of the banking and finance sector is the amount of legacy COBOL code that is still running in their back-end data centers.  Since the amount of money required to replace those systems and the potential for business interruption are so high, most companies have chosen to build around the legacy systems.

What does this mean for transmedia producers?

I'll give three quick examples from my current research: books, CDs, and movies (DVDs). While many have predicted,  the disappearance of these mediums, I don't see any of them disappearing anytime soon.  As I've tried to establish here, each of these mediums has a large installed base of compatible consumer devices and each has a very large investment in place for their production and distribution.

It's difficult to anticipate 20 to 30 years out, but as it concerns publishing I don't foresee books, magazine, or comic books, disappearing within that time period.  It's also very likely, that these forms of content distribution could even turn into just another souvenir, like a t-shirt or any other types of memorabilia.  I can even see some traditionalists clinging onto the medium, let's call it sentimental or memorabilia  publishing.  Therefore, we can anticipate many people continuing to consume printed media because it holds sentimental  value for them. A good example of that is the resurgence of vinyl LP's. While this could also be attributed to the perceived quality of analog reproduction of music, in a way this is still consistent with the transition of music to a service (or experience).

Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons: blakespot