While watching the famed Times Square ball drop in New York City, I was thinking about all of the great technologies that have affacted my life over the past decade. From the iPod changing how I listen to music to the ever-expanding cloud computing scene, this decade represented fantastic growth in both software and hardware.

Next decade, I want to see a few technologies die. Burn in a fire, wilt away by bankruptcy, I don’t care how they die, just that they do.  It’s not really that I have any personal problem with all of these crazy inventions, but I believe that the ashes of these antiquated tools will provide fertile ground for interesting new possibilities, especially on the web.

There will still be a place for all these items in the world, but in my vision I see them more as a backup tool, acting as a redundancy rather than being part of everyone’s daily activities.

1. Cable Television

Seriously, please just give it up already.  I know you guys think you’re hot stuff and all, but let Hulu take over.  Streaming TV is good.  TV shouldn’t be scheduled, should have social network integration, and shouldn’t be confined to the large screen in the house.  Consumers want their content now, they want it cheap, and I think they will be willing to put up with some (not tons) of commercials for the convenience.  You networks should offer your shows online, and keep a backlog of all previous episodes, so you don’t have to produce all those pesky DVDs.  Not to mention that it is hard to get hooked on a TV series when you haven’t seen the previous episodes.  TV over IP is the future.  You could get your cut by providing some kind of box that gets the content to the classic television, or you could fight a battle until you die, your choice.

2. Books

If you saw my previous post regarding the Kindle, you would know that I’m in love with the device.  And since he created, in my opinion, the best e-book reader currently on the market, I’ll let Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explain the future for you.

[T]he physical book really has had a 500-year run. It’s probably the most successful technology ever. [,,,] Given how much change there has been everywhere else, what’s remarkable is how stable the book has been for so long. But no technology, not even one as elegant as the book, lasts forever.

I think the Apple tablet currently driving the rumor mills mad may really excite the e-book scene.  Imagine a full color, multi-touch display that is the perfect size to carry around school.  It could hold all of your textbooks with full color maps and graphs.  Of course, some of you still have some sentimental connection with your musty old volumes, but thats what libraries are for.  I imagine you will eventually have to order a special printed version if you still want a dead tree book.

3. Radio

Pandora and Last.fm, among other internet radio stations, are the future of this stuff.  It is less costly and easier to get the music to people through the internet.  As soon as the nation can finally be covered in good 3G coverage, we can hopefully stop putting the AM/FM stuff in cars.  Some vehicles already support these stations, and many people already have cars with aux inputs for their internet capable mobile phones.  Internet radio gives people more variety, giving opportunities for niche music genre stations to pop up.  What you listen to doesn’t have to be confined to what is broadcast in your local area.  Local channels can, and will, still exist on the web, but then they can also be available globally.  If you go on a trip somewhere, you can still listen to your favorite station.  More variety for listeners, and more listeners for the radio stations.  It’s win-win.

4. Landlines

Why do we need landlines anymore?  With the introduction of femtocells, there is almost no excuse not to just use cellphones for everything now.  I guess keeping an extra landline phone around might be useful just as a backup if cell service went down, but cellphones can really be everyone’s magical little devices now.  Plus they have cool address books, wireless connectivity, and integration with other forms of communication.  The ability to pull up a Google map of all pizza places in the nearby area, tap one, and then call it to order pizza right there is awesome.  Not to mention all the wonderful advances VoIP has made lately.  I use Ventrilo everyday, which is not technically “placing a call”, but it is still great quality for internet voice.  Between cellphones and VoIP, I don’t see a place for landlines in the world anymore.

5. Credit Cards

You know those little flat, colorful, pieces of plastic that thicken all of our wallets?  Credit, debit, membership, and gift cards?  Why do we still have those?  Some countries already have this whole virtual wallet idea going pretty strong.  Unfortunately for the U.S., we don’t accept new technologies as fast as Japan and South Korea.  I should be able to just type in a passcode, aim my phone, and zap the register to complete my purchase.  I’m sure we could put in some cool fingerprint scanner or something to make the device much more secure than any flimsy card.  I can already pay people using my Paypal app on my iPhone, now I just want to see the virtual payment fully integrated into every phone and not based on a proprietary system.

[adbge has informed me that the new decade doesn't start until 2011.  Sorry, but I count decades based on the tens digit of calendar years.]

Watching these latest episodes of Dollhouse has made me, like many other fans, very upset.  The first season of Dollhouse sucked, most of us realize that.  It was simply too slow.  But now that Fox has canceled another one of Joss Whedon’s shows, the latest episodes are simply amazing.  Why is it that Fox always cancels Whedon shows like Firefly or Dollhouse right when they are getting good?  Anyways, Sci Fi Wire has a list of 7 (8 really) ways that Dollhouse could have been better, and I agree with most of them.  Especially this one:

4. Echo, with her ability to access different personalities, is a character that should have evolved early in the series and not at the end of it. Let’s face it, Eliza Dushku doesn’t do dumb Doll well. Most any actress would have had trouble with this role, considering that her character was too often either childlike boring or schizophrenic, especially in season one.

Read more here.

I went to church on Sunday.  I didn’t want to and wasn’t planning on it, but my evil controlling parental overlords forced me to honor that 4th grade commitment to the server schedule (created by evil nuns).  Somehow, maybe due to my coffee addiction, I was able to stay awake throughout the entire mass.  While I was pleasantly surprised that abortion was not the topic of discussion for once, I did notice that the priest used the word ‘mystery’ often.  This is nothing new, of course, as this word is often used in religious discussion.  One of the most used quotes is “God works in mysterious ways”.  I just want to address this philosophy and why I disagree with it.

First, lets take a little step backwards and examine reality.  (I’m about to get all Objectivist, so if you are no fan of Ayn Rand’s you may want to stop right here).  People learn about the external world through their senses.  This information is then interpreted by the mind.  Thus, people learn about their existence through information they collect through observation.

Mystery is defined as something that baffles understanding and cannot be explained.  Therefore, to attempt to explain something is to destroy the mystery, lowering the value of the event.  Not all people believe this, but some would reject any knowledge that would remove the mystery aspect.  I cannot understand these people. I’ve been told that this satisfies them, and it makes them believe in a higher power.  But I ask you this, dear readers, is it any less of a miracle is a bind man is cured for perfectly accepted medical reasons?  Is it impossible to believe that something scientifically explainable cannot be the work of your god?

We’ve already established that you should accept facts to understand existence, so to reject these facts in favor of the “mystery” effect is denying existence.  This is the connection between this post and Rand, since her main character, John Galt, in Atlas Shurgged says the following in the epic long speech at the end of the book:

When a man declares: ‘Who am I to know?’—he is declaring: ‘Who am I to live?’

Adbge and I refer to this as ‘The Whirlpool Effect’ because people prefer the whirlpool of a mystery instead of a clear and thought out explanation.  I cannot understand these people, seeing something deep and profound in something they refuse to understand.  Unfortunately, I seem to be the minority, if my school is any example.  ‘The Whirlpool Effect’ is one of my pet peeves, and I wish it would die.

Photo by mshades. Used under a Creative Commons License.