Social Aspects of New Media Technologies, pt. 2

We can see why the internet is so compelling, under uses & gratifications theory. It easily outperforms TV in at least three of the four gratifications. Entertainment? Far more choices, on demand. Personal relationships? TV strikes me as more of an impediment than a gratifier in personal relationships, while the internet allows people to connect with old friends, find romance, and participate in worldwide listserves based on personal or professional interests. Surveillance? Both media offer extensive opportunities to be aware of local, regional, national or international events of interest, but the internet allows individuals to express opinion, and perhaps more easily get involved.

The critical mass piece got me wondering, how long until traditional "paper" banking is entirely obsoleted by online banking? How will slow adopters/low resource individuals be served?

The diffusion of innovation steps look a lot like those used in advertising. First consumers must be made aware, then persuaded, the item purchased, and their decision confirmed.

Something I'm troubled by with much of the technology we're currently surrounded by is the increasing speed of obsolescence. (Is there a companion graph to level of diffusion called level of dissolution?) The entired lifespan of VHS was about 25 years; recently I went through our family's collection of home movies and Disney tapes. The home movies will need to be recorded to a newer media; the Disney tapes, which a few years ago were worth as much as $200 each as collector items--well, I'm not sure what to do with them. How about all those digital .jpg pictures we've all been snapping the past few years? All the information in .pdf's? Adobe Systems, Inc. recently introduced a file format called .pdf x/a, the "a" standing for archive. They committed to support the file format for 50 years. But given corporate mergers, bankruptcy, etc., how can we really know if this file format will survive that long?