Friday Fun: The Tragic Death of Practically Everything

Posted by John Dupuis on September 3, 2010
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It seems like everything’s dead these days: the Web, our attention spans, Microsoft, Apple, Google, whatever.

Harry McCracken has a nice post summarizing the casualties over at Technologizer: The Tragic Death of Practically Everything:

Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson is catching flack for the magazine’s current cover story, which declares that the Web is dead. I’m not sure what the controversy is. For years, once-vibrant technologies, products, and companies have been dropping like teenagers in a Freddy Krueger movie. Thank heavens that tech journalists have done such a good job of documenting the carnage as it happened. Without their diligent reporting, we might not be aware that the industry is pretty much an unrelenting bloodbath.

I really like his take on the prognostications of the guru class, as he takes a quick look at the premature predictions of demise of all kinds of things: Internet Explorer, Linux, TVs, MS Office, email, Facebook, Blackberries, Firefox, iPods, RSS and, well, a whole bunch more. Lots of great commentary and further suggestions of dead things in the comments of the post too.

Puts it all in perspective for the next time you read about the demise of a popular gadget, company or institution.

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Comments

  1. #1 Left_Wing_Fox
    September 3, 2010

    Wow. I knew Wired loved the “X is Dead!” frame for writing articles, but I never relize djust how bad it was over there.

  2. #2 netjaeger
    September 3, 2010

    Good eve,
    Personally I find prognosticators (aka prophets) to be quite wonderful markers when looking backwards at the culture.

    E.g. over and over they demonstrate that whatever guidance is being provided, it’s reliably inaccurate.

    tq

  3. #3 Loden Pantz
    September 3, 2010

    The artist formerly known as Prince, now known as Prince, has already declared the Internet dead. What more proof do you need?

  4. #4 Fred
    September 6, 2010

    I would comment on this post, if it weren’t for my unshakable conviction that blogging is dead.

  5. #5 Eric Lund
    September 7, 2010

    Yet there are many technologies which have disappeared. Just a sample of computer technologies I remember: Floppy disks (both 5.25″ and 3.5″). Zip drives. RS-232.

    The first of these left its trace in the default identity of the Windows boot drive as the C: drive. A and B were reserved for the floppies everybody used back in the day.

  6. #6 userbot88
    September 7, 2010

    I had thought the floppy was dead too…

    We recently purchased a brand new FV1000 confocal microscope for the lab, over half a million dollars, and it still uses a floppy disk for system restore functions. I haven’t even seen blank floppies for sale anywhere but Big Lots in years.

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